


The One Thing Better Than Pitch Is More Pitch

by Emerald Embers (emeraldembers)



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Nightmare Dork University - Fandom, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Nightmare Dork University, Other, Sexual Content, Wardrobeverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-07-27 14:15:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 36
Words: 48,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7621606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeraldembers/pseuds/Emerald%20Embers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when four versions of Pitch, a few Jack Frosts, and a sprinkling of Sandys and other assorted characters end up living in the same alternate universes?</p>
<p>This hot mess is what happens, that's what.</p>
<p>So, back in 2012/2013, in the height of Rise of the Guardians fandom, AUs tended to breed with other AUs until you ended up with a beautiful, Inception-ish tangle. This is a collection of some of the fics that arose from that tangle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Honey and Vinegar (Pitch/Pitchiner, Wardrobeverse, Mature)

**Author's Note:**

> If you want some context for how Nightmare Dork University and the Wardrobeverse came to be, a great little 101 was produced here:
> 
> http://nightmaredorkarchive.tumblr.com/NDU101
> 
> In addition, as the answer to who is paired with who changes from fic to fic in this universe, I'll be putting pairings (or characters, where gen fic is concerned), ratings, and warnings on each individual chapter.

**AU:** Wardrobeverse  
 **Pairing:** Pitch/Pitchiner  
 **Rating:** Mature  
 **Warning:** Dubcon elements

* * *

Pitch loathes him. There can be no doubt of that; Pitchiner might enjoy teasing his counterpart, taking advantage of the size difference between them to manhandle Pitch at leisure as if their relationship is a game he simply plays at, but he is under no illusion about their reasons for sharing a home and, occasionally, a bed. It is a matter of usefulness as far as Pitch is concerned, nothing more.

Pitch understands the world they are both stranded on. Pitchiner is the key to Pitch being able to control that same world.

Sometimes Pitch slips into moods that do neither of them any good, becoming sullen and stubborn, as unchangeable in mind as he is in body, and Pitchiner considers it his duty to break Pitch out of those moods.

Most of the time, he can break Pitch's mood through catching him by the ankles and forcefully taking him out for a walk, or by licking him top to tail. Every once in a while, however, Pitch requires a little more persuasion.

 

Pitchiner likes the fight. He likes that Pitch has it in him to fight - a show of strength, however pathetic, in the cuts he scratches into Pitchiner's arms and back - and he likes what Pitch's tendency to leave his face alone suggests. He likes seeing fire in Pitch's eyes instead of ice.

When Pitchiner wrestles Pitch's robes down until they're hanging loose and useless around his hips, marks his territory with bites that draw blood all too easily, the anticipation is almost better than the act that comes after. That moment of surrender - when Pitch is high on pain and giddy from exposure - Pitchiner can taste it in copper on his tongue, and it's easy to scoop Pitch up and carry him over to the sofa, or bed, or floor - whatever strikes him as most convenient at the time.

He could shrink down to a more manageable size, something more appealing to Pitch's tastes, but penetration is of little interest to him. He prefers to watch, offering his hand or tongue if Pitch needs more than his own fingers for stimulation, enjoying the performance.

Pitch never intends to put on a show, but he can't help it - it's in his nature. Pitchiner watches the arch of Pitch's spine, the way he grits his teeth and throws his head back, the rolling of his hips as he strokes or finger-fucks himself to completion; it's all perfectly beautiful, perfectly over-dramatic.

Pitch isn't a screamer if Pitchiner lets him come without interruption, but he makes exceptions when a well timed bite on the thigh or shoulder catches him out.

 

Pitch can usually bear his presence for a few hours afterwards. On occasion, there'll be something close to affection in his actions - dazed kisses and absent-minded caresses, even an embrace.

On other occasions, he's as hateful as ever, but the hate will have lost its paralysing edge; he'll listen to Pitchiner, whether he pretends to ignore him or not.

Pitch loathes him, and fights every time Pitchiner takes him to bed.

It doesn't change how they need each other.

And it doesn't change how Pitchiner knows that Pitch, when half-asleep from wounds and an orgasm, begrudgingly appreciates him.


	2. Pitchiner’s Parents Pay a Visit (Pitch/Pitchiner, Nightmare Dork University, Teen And Up Audiences)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairings:** Pitch/Pitchiner, references to Jack/Pitchiner and Jack/Piki  
>  **Rating:** Teen And Up Audiences  
>  **Warnings:** Some homophobic comments, sexist comments, and alcohol and drug references.  
>  **Summary:** Exactly what it says in the title! A take on my personal headcanon for Pitchiner's parents.

Even if he liked to bitch and moan about his parents as much as the next person, Pitchiner had to admit he’d lucked out in a way he hadn’t even realised _was_ lucky until he went to university - he got along with them, and pretty much always had. He’d only been in a few big fights with them, and they’d never been over anything too major - just a few times when his grades had slipped because he hadn’t bothered to study properly, or when he’d been both drunk and failing to respond to phone calls. After the incident where he woke up in a tree in his back yard clad only in boxer shorts and a sports’ scarf, he’d begrudgingly admitted they were half-right and agreed to make sure that if he was going to get wasted, he’d do so in the comfort of his or someone else’s home. The vicious case of man-flu he developed shortly after the tree incident had made him decide to keep that promise.

He liked that he could tell they were proud of him for going to university, even if living away from home hadn’t stopped them checking in to make sure he wasn’t getting too drunk too often, or forgetting to go to classes, or getting on the bad side of any of his tutors.

Of course, liking them didn’t mean it was any less awkward when one or both of them decided to pay a visit, even if they at least had the decency to give a day or two’s warning before they did. It meant a chance to tidy up a little - enough to hide things away without _looking_ like he was hiding something. The worst of Proto’s experiments, Piki’s collection of allegedly innocent but entirely obscene-looking statuettes, and anything that contained or looked like it might have at some point contained drugs or alcohol.

Pitchiner knew his dad wasn’t fooled, but he had a feeling his mother was, and he and his dad had silently agreed to keep things that way.

 

The other issue with a parental visit was the fact that it meant no sex for anyone for the duration of the visit, and having to try and hide or heal from any injuries that might have occurred during sex previously. Jack, thankfully, was not a biter or a scratcher, but Pitch tended to mark his territory and left welts that were best kept unexplained. One of the advantages of having theatre buffs around was their access to stage make-up, and once or twice Piki in particular had saved the day when shirts and scarves weren’t enough to hide the damage.

Piki had spent the whole time muttering about how covering up his sibling’s love bites was a process that would scar him for life, but he’d done a fantastic job, and Pitchiner had rewarded him with a bottle of reasonably expensive wine afterwards. He’d bitched and moaned about the wine too, but Pitchiner figured bitching and moaning just happened to be a necessary part of communication in Pitch’s family.

Visits from parents were a communal effort, and everyone bar Proto seemed to understand that.

 

Most of the time, visits were just excuses to drop off care packages of food, clothing, and “real” beer while ensuring Pitchiner was kept up to date on the latest family gossip. Once in an awkward while they were also excuses to check that Pitchiner hadn’t picked up a girlfriend despite the fact that it had been well and clearly established pretty early on that Pitchiner didn’t just put up posters of hot guys in sports gear around his bedroom because he admired their talent.

Proto hadn’t helped normalise anything by calmly reassuring Pitchiner’s dad that their living arrangement was a ‘thoroughly modern one’. Even if it was semi-true in some ways courtesy of the complications thrown in by the whole him-and-Pitch, him-and-Jack, Jack-and-Piki thing, it wasn’t really something Pitchiner intended to ever broach with his parents.

He’d been very, very quick to explain as inexplicitly as possible that his dick and Proto’s weren’t and never would be acquaintances, and his dad’s relief had been palpable. Proto’s particular variety of polite inscrutability gave off the impression that sex with him would probably involve the loss of a vital organ or two, and possibly a sacrifice to some eldritch deity.

 

Aside from the fact his dad was kind of aggressively heterosexual, perplexed by how Pitchiner could attend a university full of 'beautiful, baggage-free women’ without wanting to bring one of them home, being visited by his parents was never too much of an issue. When they left, he’d get hugs to tide him over until the next one, and he’d have a re-stocked fridge as a bonus. Sometimes he’d also find the dishes done if he’d left his mother alone for a few minutes during the visits, no matter how many times he asked her not to do it because it left him feeling guilty as hell.

Once Pitchiner was done waving them off, he’d usually be collared by Pitch for whatever faults he had that his parents lacked - there’d be some accusation of vulgarity or bad manners or similar - and he’d be subjected to a lecture.

And then he would wrap an arm around Pitch’s waist, another under his hips, and attempt to carry him through to the bedroom while nodding and humming and blatantly refusing to pay any attention to Pitch’s lecture, more interested in watching indignation flush Pitch’s cheeks and darken his eyes.

It didn’t particularly matter that Pitch would often shove Pitchiner off, curse him out, and leave in a sulk. Because sometimes Pitch didn’t shove. And after a day or two of knowing he couldn’t have sex courtesy of the visit from his parents, Pitchiner was always wound up in entertaining ways that were all the more entertaining if he could unwind them with Pitch.

 

Pitchiner didn’t mind so much that his relationship with Pitch was a messy affair. He’d lucked out in having parents he got on with. It’d be unfair if he got along with his boyfriend all the time too.


	3. Pitchiner Tries to Give Jack a Present and Almost Succeeds (Jack/Pitch/Pitchiner, Nightmare Dork University, Mature)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairings:** Jack/Pitchiner, Pitch/Pitchiner, references to Jack/Piki and Jack/Pitch/Pitchiner  
>  **Rating:** Mature  
>  **Summary:** Wherein Jack accidentally lets Pitchiner know he wouldn't mind a threesome, and Pitchiner almost successfully orchestrates one.

Jack likes the strange little family he’s made at university, even if he’s terrified of losing it. Piki, Pitch, Pitchiner - even Proto, to a lesser extent. It’s a silly fear and he knows it, chastises himself for it with the knowledge that he loves his cousin and hasn’t lost him yet - but in his gut there’s always that insidious whisper of how there’s more than one way to lose a person. It’s a deep-rooted, even instinctive fear, and it’s part of why he often sees through Proto’s bullshit when the others don’t. Proto likes to analyse people, pick their layers apart, and use what he finds for his own amusement; Jack doesn’t really get to have layers because of his particular variety of anxiety, and although the lack of protection makes him easy to scare or hurt, it also means there aren’t lies or secrets built into how he presents himself for others to abuse.

Jack wishes he was smarter, sometimes, because then he wouldn’t just see through Proto’s bullshit, he’d have the ability to help the others see through it too. That Piki doesn’t see what he sees is a mystery because Piki’s scarily smart - Jack gets why the others don’t, because Pitch is smart but not too people-smart, and Pitchiner just steamrolls over conversations he doesn’t like so there’s no need for him to spot these things. Piki on the other hand is caustic with people but usually seems to understand them, so his blind spot where Proto is concerned makes no sense to Jack, unless it’s a “family are different” thing.

 

Even if Jack likes to think of Proto as an antagonist for ease’s sake, there are odd moments where he’s thankful for how Proto can’t seem to leave well alone. Proto’s occasional digs at Jack’s relationships with the others are frequently amongst those moments, because they rarely work out as planned.

Proto has a talent for setting Pitch and Pitchiner at each other’s throats, but when he tries to drive a wedge between Jack and Piki or Jack and Pitchiner, his words often have the opposite effect to what was intended. Jack doesn’t entirely know why, but the others have a protective streak towards him, and it works in his favour.

He tries not to misuse that fact - he doesn’t want to take advantage of that protective streak to manipulate anyone in the same way Proto would use secrets and fear - but sometimes it’s hard not to. Jack gets lonely at times. He gets low. And he’s learned that when Piki won’t have him, Pitchiner will.

Pitchiner insists that Pitch would too, “If he could just get that stick out of his ass about banging someone his brother’s boned.”

It’s a thought that has set Jack’s mind wandering more than once, somewhat guiltily because it feels greedy when he already has Piki and Pitchiner, but he can’t pretend he hasn’t looked. Pitch has amazing legs and a penchant for tight clothes that show them off, and his face has the same combination of improbably beautiful angles as Piki’s.

Therein lies another reason for guilt, as if he didn’t have enough already - he feels unnaturally lucky to have this family of Pitches in his life without intimacy being involved, and it feels almost incestuous to think about kissing Pitch when he’s already familiar with Piki’s mouth.

The thought refuses to go away though, and when Pitchiner asks Jack what he’s thinking about while he’s loose-limbed and dazed from a recent orgasm, he answers all too honestly; “What it looks l-like when you kiss Pitch.”

 

Jack should have known Pitchiner wouldn’t forget. Pitchiner is stubborn as a mule when he has an idea in mind, and if he thinks the idea will embarrass or excite someone he likes, he’s stubborner still. It’s exhausting to be Pitchiner’s friend at times, though Jack would never breathe a word of complaint.

Proto has left the flat on a quest for sawdust and salt that no one wants to know the reasoning behind while everyone else has gathered on the sofa to watch The Wicker Man. It’s a surreal experience because Pitchiner treats the movie like a musical, singing along to surprisingly filthy lyrics, while Pitch keeps using it as an excuse to educate everyone on various ways the movie misrepresents pagan belief systems and rituals. Jack doesn’t interrupt to point out that one of his cousin’s best friends is really into Wicca and as a result he knows a lot of this stuff already, mostly because it would be rude, but also because it’s kind of nice to just let Pitch’s voice wash over him without needing to pay close attention.

Pitchiner is in charge of selecting the next DVD to watch, and Jack frowns in confusion when he digs out the Nicholas Cage remake and puts in the disk.

Pitch cusses Pitchiner out before closing his eyes and attempting to sleep in protest at the movie choice, but Pitchiner leaves him to it instead of fighting back, settling down between Pitch and Jack on the sofa with both arms wrapped around a bowl of popcorn. He’s weirdly quiet, and the way he almost succeeds in stifling laughter whenever Nicholas Cage looks traumatised lets Jack know he’s being quiet on purpose.

Jack doesn’t know why Pitchiner’s keeping the noise levels down anymore than he knows why Pitchiner treats this version of The Wicker Man as a comedy, but he doesn’t mind the confusion much. It’s warm and snug at Pitchiner’s side, and there’s nowhere else he needs to be.

 

It’s a terrible movie, so Jack’s dozing off thanks to comfort and boredom when Pitchiner’s elbow nudges him in the side; he shifts away slightly before another nudge and a “Psst!” reveal that Pitchiner is after attention, not more room. Jack meets his eyes, just about, and Pitchiner grins wide before setting down the bowl of popcorn and turning to lean over Pitch, bracing his arms either side of Pitch’s head.

“Hey, sleeping beauty,” Pitchiner says, nuzzling Pitch’s nose with his own, and Jack forgets how to breathe properly when Pitchiner kisses Pitch awake.

It kind of says a lot about Pitch that he frowns even before he opens his eyes, but it says more that after a brief glance to check who’s kissing him he shuts them again and parts his lips a little wider.

Jack can’t stop blushing, wants to run and hide out of embarrassment at having witnessed something Pitch is clearly half-asleep enough to think of as private, but at the same time he can’t take his eyes off the scene. Pitchiner’s hands seem huge next to Pitch’s face, enough to give off a wholly inaccurate impression of frailty on Pitch’s part, and he can see the softness of Pitch’s lips in the way they react to pressure from Pitchiner’s own.

Pitchiner smirks before he slips his tongue into Pitch’s mouth, and Jack fists his hands in his lap, tries not to hyperventilate, closes his eyes against the sight.

When Pitch lets out a breathy moan in response to whatever Pitchiner is doing to him now, Jack scrambles to his feet and makes a run for the bathroom, knocking over the bowl of popcorn on the way. He knows this whole thing is Pitchiner’s idea of a present, and he’s thankful for it - really, _really_ thankful - but arousal has swept over him so quickly he’s literally dizzy with it.

Jack locks the bathroom door behind himself and sits with his back to the shower, concentrates on breathing and trying to ignore what he knows is going on in the other room.

He doesn’t do too badly until the smacking sounds start. A chorus of hisses and “Ow"s don’t help either, and his mind wanders enough that he has to give in and take advantage of the bathroom’s privacy, removing his pants and wrapping a hand around his cock. He tries to be fast in case Pitch or Pitchiner want to use the bathroom when they’re done, rougher with himself than Pitchiner or Piki ever are, and bites down on his free hand to keep quiet.

Pitchiner’s grunts turn steady and rhythmic as Pitch’s gasps rise in - well, _in pitch_ , and Jack bites harder still, knowing he’ll have teeth marks for the rest of the day at the very least.

He comes long before they do, takes advantage of their volume levels to hide the sounds of running a towel under cold water so he can clean himself and the floor up, and he feels a strange sort of relief when he pulls his pants back on and straightens his clothing.

The relief disappears when he realises after the others go quiet that even if Pitchiner knows why he’s just spent a good ten minutes or so in the bathroom, he needs to come up with an excuse Pitch can accept, and after a moment’s thought he wets his face, makes a retching noise, and flushes the toilet. Being deathly pale has its advantages, sometimes, and Jack’s not the worst actor who’s ever lived.

 

Without Proto to over-analyse his symptoms or Piki to panic about them, Jack feigns illness well enough to convince Pitch he has to leave. It does earn Pitchiner a scolding for abandoning him to be sick, but the scolding gets cut short when Pitchiner points out that Pitch wasn’t overly concerned about Jack’s whereabouts himself.

Jack turns his nervous giggle into a faked coughing fit and leaves in a hurry, shrugging on his coat and ignoring his cell phone’s buzzing until he’s got some genuine privacy.

He’s glad for the privacy when he does check his phone.

_When its ur birthday u can keep watching ;)_

_We’ll take pictures_

_;) ;) ;)_

He doesn’t faint. Barely.


	4. Listening Is Almost As Good As Watching (Jack/Piki, Nightmare Dork University, Mature)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Jack/Piki  
>  **Rating:** Mature  
>  **Summary:** Jack was in his bathroom, in his bath, naked. And Piki was very much not ready to deal with that.

Coming home at the end of a long day had never been a particular highlight for Piki. He would have liked it to be - would have liked to feel the relief others did, and be able to understand it better as a result - but he’d never been able to switch off easily. Closing the door on the outside world did not automatically mean a chance to relax; it just meant a chance to think and write in a quieter environment.

Letting Jack move in with him hadn’t changed how quiet his home was much - he didn’t dare think _their_ home, knew this was just a temporary arrangement courtesy of Jack’s cousin, even if he wished otherwise - but it had changed the way he thought at the end of a day. Before Jack moved in, they were scattered and unfocused - scraps he needed to note down for when he was “officially” working, shopping lists and contact details, people he needed to call and bills he needed to pay.

With Jack around, the thoughts still came to mind, but they didn’t have the stress-inducing urgency they once had. Piki still made notes, not allowing himself the luxury of forgetting little details, but he had something to focus on now - or someone.

Jack was like an open book that had been soaked and left to dry - he hid nothing, but he was so fragile he felt impossible to read. Piki wanted to know everything about him, every secret, every scar that had made the boy so different from others his age he might as well have been from another world. If he caught Jack reading, he would memorise the book - its title, author, genre, anything that would give him a hint as to what Jack liked. Similarly, if he came across Jack eating something that hadn’t been handed to him by others, he’d memorise what it was, where it was from, what culture that cooking style came from, what allergies it ruled out.

He didn’t want to take Jack apart to see what made him tick, he wanted to breathe Jack, to inhale him, to let something of that otherworldly nature help him escape the thousands of faces he _did_ understand.

 

Piki had never particularly enjoyed coming home to empty rooms beforehand, but the feeling was amplified when he came home to empty rooms Jack might have been in. Piki ran through the motions of locking the front door, hanging up his coat and setting down the remainder of his accessories in their usual places, and headed for the bathroom.

A brief, confused rattle of the bathroom door handle followed by a loud splash of water inside and “J-just a second!” had his heart jumping up into his throat.

“It’s fine, I was just -” think think _think goddamnit_ “- wondering if you were in. It’s fine, stay in the water.”

Another few loud splashes, and a nervous “O-okay, i-i-if you’re s-sure?” were followed by relative silence, and Piki slumped to the floor, holding his breath.

Jack was in his bathroom.

In his bath.

Jack was naked in his home.

Piki let out the breath he’d been holding as quietly as he could, chest aching with the effort of trying to breathe calmly when he wanted to hyperventilate, before he shifted to sit with his back to the bathroom door, tilting his head back carefully to rest against it without causing a thud.

_Jack was naked in his home._

Piki closed his eyes, mind racing and his blood burning hot but confused as to whether it wanted to make his cheeks flush, his hands sweat, or his cock twitch. It certainly seemed determined to try all three at once.

Quiet, softer splashes came from within the bathroom and Piki bit his tongue, aching at the thought of Jack’s hands on Jack’s skin. The damp air seeping out from within the bathroom was a hint Jack had run the water hot - he should have turned the extractor fan on to stop the steam causing any damage, but Piki couldn’t bring himself to care properly. Anyone else would have deserved telling off, but he knew Jack wouldn’t have forgotten out of laziness or spite, and if the extractor fan had been on, he might not have heard anything. Not the splashes, not Jack’s quiet little sighs and tuneless humming.

Piki balled his hands into fists, let himself imagine what it might be like inside the bathroom. What it would mean to be allowed to sit beside the bathtub, watching or even talking to Jack while he washed. To be allowed to help him wash.

Piki thought about the harder to reach places on Jack’s back; about rubbing soap on his hands and then into the space between Jack’s shoulders and down, sweeping over his spine, feeling the bumps and the curve, down and down -

He bit his tongue harder, inhaled too sharply in response, and only exhaled when he realised Jack hadn’t stirred inside the bathroom. His cock was starting to demand attention, though he chose to ignore it, wanting to hear as much as he could even if it was a dangerous game to play.

He imagined the moment Jack would climb out of the water, emerging like some sort of nymph or water sprite, elegant without meaning to be. Jack’s clumsiness was like a foal’s - all limbs and dazed confusion, but not something to mock. Not to Piki.

He imagined taking towels in hand and drying Jack off before wrapping him up, torn between wanting to touch him and wanting to protect him, wanting to keep him pure and wanting to sweep him off his feet and carry his damp, warm skin through to the bedroom -

A series of loud splashes and the unmistakable glugging sound of a bathplug being removed had Piki scrambling to his feet and running for his bedroom, closing the door behind himself tight and wishing the bathroom wasn’t the only one inside his home with a lock. Thank _God_ Jack had manners when it came to knocking, at least.

Piki leant back against the door, clutching the handle tight for dear life with sweating hands, but there was no knock, just a shuffle of feet in the opposite direction, and as much as Piki hated TV he’d never been happier to hear one turn on. The volume quickly turned down, low and unobtrusive, and Piki let go of the door handle, let himself strip from the waist down and grab his cock instead.

Jack’s presence in his home was torture, but it was torture of the finest sort.


	5. An Irresistable Choice (Jack/Piki, Nightmare Dork University, Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Jack/Piki  
>  **Rating:** Explicit  
>  **Warning:** Neglectful parents and references to past child death.  
>  **Summary:** Wherein Piki visits Jack during the holidays, doesn't embarrass himself, and learns a little bit more about why Jack never recovered from his sister's death.

Piki was as familiar with drama as people tended to be with breathing. Having Pitch for a brother helped, given his sibling’s tendency to screech and scratch his way through life on a daily basis, but he had his own flair for the theatrical to deal with as well. Most of it he channelled into his work, with reasonable success, but once in a while it demanded to be expressed.

It was rare that he indulged his dramatic streak in such a way that he was himself unsure as to whether he’d taken a step too far.

His summer schedule had been crammed with family events to attend - with people he needed to meet and greet, lubricating the social ladder with air kisses and handshakes - and after three weeks of schmoozing, he’d had enough. He packed his bags, left a note in his room along with his phone advising that he had exhausted his people skills for the summer and would be taking a vacation until further notice, and hopped on the first train out of the city.

After three hours of travel he was somewhat regretting leaving his phone behind, but at least he had his laptop to hand. There weren’t any all-caps or delicately italicised messages in his inbox yet, and he had an open email that offered distraction whenever he started to question his own judgement.

Jack had emailed Piki his own plans for the summer, or lack thereof, and an excited ramble about a book he’d been reading, finishing with a message that had inspired Piki’s decision to flee from home.

Jack had included his address, and asked that if it wasn’t too much of a bother and he had the time, could Piki maybe - please - write to him. Piki intended to do a little more than write.

 

Jack’s house was extraordinarily ordinary, given who lived in it. Piki had expected something Dickensian, or at the very least southern gothic, but it was unremarkable in every way.

His hand froze at the prospect of ringing the doorbell.

Nerves told him he was being ridiculous, turning up uninvited at Jack’s doorstep with his bags and his laptop, expecting to stay a few days - maybe even a week or two - without prior notice or warning. Jack’s parents were strangers to him, known only by a few photos on social networks.

The same part of his gut that had made him get on a train reminded him that Jack’s house had Jack inside it, and therefore there was no better place in the world to be.

He rang the bell.

 

After an awkward moment of Piki explaining he wasn’t selling goods, services, or religion, Jack’s father finally opened the door and asked what he was after. It was followed by an even more awkward moment when Piki instinctively replied “Jack”, and had to quickly stammer out he meant to visit Jack, and could he see him if that was at all possible.

Jack’s father shrugged, gestured with his head towards the opposite end of the house. “He’s in the back yard.”

Piki hadn’t expected a warm welcome, but he’d expected some sort of indication as to whether he was allowed in the house or not. Jack’s father didn’t seem to care, wandering off upstairs but leaving the door open, so Piki decided even if it wasn’t quite an invitation to come in, it was at least permission.

 

The house was laid out simply enough - a main hallway with a staircase and doors to two ground floor rooms, and at the end of that hallway a kitchen which opened onto the back yard.

And Jack.

Piki set his bags down by the kitchen door, watching Jack a moment longer while he had the chance to do so in genuine peace. Jack was weeding the flowerbeds with bare hands, pausing from time to time to check he wasn’t harming any plants that were meant to be there, and it was such a gift to see him when he didn’t _know_ someone could see him that it was hard for Piki to make himself open the door onto the yard.

Jack’s expression made every second of doubt during the train journey worth it.

Piki was used to Jack appearing overwhelmed - he didn’t seem to have enough room in him to contain his feelings, his moments of fear or misery spilling out of him with shivering and tears - but it was unique to see him overwhelmed by joy, and an honour to say the very least.

Jack’s grin as he ran over to Piki and wrapped both arms around his waist was the brightest thing Piki had ever seen, and although Jack was shaking, although he was crying, Piki knew it was a good sort of cry when he cradled Jack against him, one hand in his hair and the other between his shoulders.

It seemed a pity to ruin the moment with words, but as Jack was trying to hiccup out a “H- h- h-” that might have been “How” or “Hello”, Piki opted to interrupt with, “Hello, Jack. I missed you too.”

 

It was a warm enough day for sitting with Jack in the back yard and forgetting about his luggage to feel entirely justified. Jack was still Jack - still nervous and prone to stuttering - but he seemed to be in his own territory while gardening, and he kept glancing up at Piki during their conversation, sometimes reaching over to touch his hand or arm lightly as if to check he hadn’t disappeared.

It made Piki’s chest tighten and ache. He wanted to tell Jack he’d never leave - wanted to tell Jack there was no reason to worry over his friendship or his love - but even if there was no one else in the whole world he could ever want more than Jack, he feared being the person to make that promise. No one deserved love more than Jack, and as much as Piki wanted to give him that love, he was still haunted by the thought he might not be able to give him enough.

Piki watched Jack’s fingers untangling the roots of a weed from the roots of a rose bush, and realised he would quite literally kill for Jack.

 

Piki’s skin type prevented him from staying out in the sun too long, even if Jack’s own seemed to cope with the heat well enough, and Piki rose to head inside, surprised and delighted when Jack took his hand and joined him.

“Do your parents know we’re -” Piki started, failing to find the right word at first before settling on, “- together?”

“They don’t c-care,” Jack replied quietly, squeezing Piki’s hand a little tighter. He didn’t let go either, which made carrying Piki’s bags out of the kitchen and upstairs an entertaining exercise, but it was funny in a way they could both laugh at. It even succeeded in distracting Piki temporarily from the fact the room they were dropping his bags in was apparently Jack’s own.

Jack pressed a quick, fleeting kiss to Piki’s cheek before finally letting go of his hand and saying, “I’ll j-just get the air b-b-bed. You don’t mind, d-do you? I can al-always-”

Piki shook his head, hand already itching to hold Jack’s again. “Wherever you want me is fine.”

Jack nodded, half-hopping, half-running out of the room and calling out, “J-John? Wh-where did Jenny put the c-camping g-gear?”

It afforded Piki a chance to breathe and gather himself at least. Of course he had wanted to see inside Jack’s room - to gather more of an idea of what Jack liked and who Jack was - but he hadn’t imagined being allowed to sleep in it. Piki resisted the urge to start opening drawers or rooting around Jack’s wardrobe, but he did allow himself to look at the contents of Jack’s bookshelves, at the action figures, case-less CDs, and bits of wire and loose change scattered over surfaces.

One figure stood out more than the others, its arm hanging loose and poorly jointed at its side, its plastic hair coated in at least three different kinds of glitter nail varnish, and Piki felt a strange, sad weight settle in his gut.

Of course, it could have been Jack who had glittered the action figure. Piki doubted that, though. Jack avoided talking about his little sister, but Piki knew enough to know that he’d had one, he’d loved her, and she’d died young.

Part of him wondered what he would have done with Pitch’s sketchbooks and notepads if his brother had met with an accident, and he turned away from the doll and the thought quickly, feeling sick.

“These are yours,” Jack said on his return, handing over a deflated air bed, blanket, and pillow. “Do you need anything e-else?”

Piki shook his head, set down what would be his makeshift bed for the night, and came up with a subject to distract his thoughts from returning to the glitter-haired doll. “Tell me more about that book you’ve been reading, Jack.”

Jack visibly relaxed as he started monologuing about Darkly Dreaming Dexter, and Piki allowed himself to get lost in Jack’s enthusiastic stuttering.

 

Dinner was a strange affair. No one in Jack’s family seemed to acknowledge anyone else for more than a few seconds at a time despite sharing a dinner table; Piki wasn’t entirely surprised by Jack’s father given his behaviour on Piki’s arrival, but Jack’s mother was so quiet one could be excused for forgetting she was even there. Jack’s father sped through eating his dinner, heading upstairs without a word after finishing, and when his mother did speak up in his absence, it was only for a brief exchange of pleasantries.

“You’re Jack’s friend from university, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Piki replied, glancing at Jack and wondering if he had the right to say it wasn’t the platonic sort of friendship.

“That’s good. Jack could do with more friends.” She smiled, making eye contact, and it took all Piki’s self-control not to shrink back. Her smile was as light and empty as cotton candy, and when she returned to eating, he caught himself letting out a breath of relief. It was no small wonder Jack had taken a while to adjust to pizza nights at Pitch and Pitchiner’s place, where food came joint second with alcohol to heated arguments about whatever had angered Pitch most that particular evening.

Jack’s left hand found Piki’s right under the table, squeezed it before he said, “Is it okay if - if we leave the table early, Jenny? Piki’s bed needs sorting -”

“Sure, Jack. Let me know if you need anything.”

It was only after leaving the table that Piki realised what had seemed off about how Jack and his parents addressed each other, when they did so at all. It wasn’t so much the use of names as it was the absence of anything else; no mom, dad, son, kid. Nothing remotely resembling an endearment, either.

Of course he didn’t expect every family to be like Pitchiner’s with his father’s penchant for creative nicknames and his mother’s use of every endearment under the sun, but even at the most formal of events Piki had heard his mother call him “dear”.

 

Piki helped Jack inflate the airbed in a more comfortable silence than the one downstairs had been, each of them taking turns with the foot-pump until their legs ached, and each having a five minute break to brush their teeth and change into sleepwear afterwards.

Jack seemed happy enough to sit and read while Piki loaded up his laptop and checked his emails, and they shared a quick laugh at Pitch’s raging email about Piki “abandoning” him. There were threats of setting fire to books that Piki knew Pitch wouldn’t follow through on, and another of pissing in Piki’s laundry hamper that he might, but all in all he seemed to have taken the news quite well by his usual standards.

Even if it was still fairly bright outside, after a day of packing, travelling, and partially unpacking, Piki was exhausted enough for sleep to feel like a good idea anyway. The laptop had even been kind enough to warm his pillow for him, and as Piki looked up at Jack’s peaceful reading face from that pillow, he wondered how he’d ever thought - even for a second - that visiting Jack might be a bad idea.

He also wondered if it would be worth suggesting Pitch visit Pitchiner during the holidays, and snorted on picturing the histrionics that would cause.

Jack glanced down at him briefly, looking curious and a touch concerned as to where the laughter had come from, but Piki waved a dismissive hand. “It’s nothing. I was just thinking about Pitch. Goodnight, Jack.”

Jack nodded, clutching his book a little tighter. “Goodnight.”

 

Piki slept uneasily, stirring every hour or two only to roll over and try to sleep again. The clock on Jack’s bedside table seemed to taunt him, and after waking up at four a.m. with a headache, Piki got up and stretched out his arms and legs, glad he’d had the foresight to pack aspirin, if not water.

Jack had curled up in his sleep, knees tucked to his chest like a foetus, and his face buried in his arms. Piki felt strangely thankful for that - he had seen Jack asleep a few times at university, and his heart had never entirely adapted to the sight. It was easy enough to sneak past him to the door, heading outside and downstairs to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. He half expected to find Jack’s mother still sitting in the kitchen, like some Miss Havisham figure, but the house was silent enough it might as well have been empty.

Piki downed his aspirin and water, found himself filing away the house’s layout in case he could make use of it in his works later. Something about Jack’s house felt dead - as if the walls themselves mourned his sister - and Jack’s mother was a ghost with a pulse.

He regretted leaving his phone behind. Even if he’d only be cursed at for a four a.m. phone call, it would have been good to hear Pitch’s voice.

 

Jack’s face was no longer hidden when Piki returned, his eyes screwed too tightly shut for sleep, and Piki bit his lip before sitting down at Jack’s side.

Jack blushed before opening his eyes and admitting, “I thought you might’ve left.”

Piki shook his head, winced slightly as the aspirin had yet to kick in. “No. I would have said goodbye first.” Jack stared up at him, and Piki took a few deep breaths, realised his words had carried a lot more weight than he realised. “I came here for you,” Piki added. “As long as you want me here - if I’m allowed - I’ll stay.”

Jack wriggled over on the bed, making space beside him, and Piki’s heart hammered in his chest at the thought that Jack wanted him to climb in, made it a struggle to ask, “Do you want me to-?”

“Y-yeah. Yes,” Jack replied, blushing so fiercely it was a wonder he had blood for anything else, and Piki slipped under the duvet, lying on his side and feeling Jack’s heat radiating against him.

Jack was too beautiful to be real even in this dim light, an angel made human, and Piki stroked a hand through pale hair, marvelling at the fact he was allowed to touch it, that time and time again Jack had allowed him to touch more.

“You are too lovely,” he murmured, words feeling clumsy in his mouth, and he closed his eyes to kiss Jack, afraid he might lose himself in that loveliness otherwise.

Jack’s skin burned hot from his blushing, and his lips were every bit as soft, every bit as sweet as Piki remembered. He could give up the world entirely for Jack if asked - nothing felt or looked or smelled as good as him. Piki kissed the plump swell of Jack’s lower lip, the gentle curves of his upper lip, following the bow from corner to corner and tasting the damp edges, parting only to take a breath before he nudged Jack’s lips open and touched the tip of his tongue to Jack’s. Under normal circumstances he was a hungrier kisser, possessive and desperate, but his headache had stolen that hunger, made it easier to enjoy Jack whole-heartedly.

Jack’s hands pushed at Piki’s chest before he broke away from the kiss and leaned over the side of his bed, rooting about for a moment before turning back to Piki, two sachets of lube and a condom in his hand. “I, h- I- I want to,” Jack said, taking a moment to catch his breath then continuing, “I want you t-to fuck me. If - if that’s okay.”

Piki kissed Jack hard before nodding, taking the three small packets from Jack’s hand and kissing him a second time, softer. “Thank you,” he said, not sure what else he could say, and stripped off his t-shirt and shorts.

Courtesy of the headache his cock wasn’t showing anywhere near as much interest as it ought to, but that was probably a good thing given past experience. Piki wanted to ruin Jack for all other men, but he’d only really succeeded in ruining every previous time they’d tried to have sex. He’d come too quickly, or said the wrong thing, or forgotten to lock the door, or forgotten to check for perverse cousins before locking the door. He’d wanted so badly for everything to go right that he’d gotten it wrong, but for some mysterious reason Jack kept forgiving him for those disasters.

Piki took his own cock’s disinterest as an excuse to work on Jack’s, helping him out of his t-shirt and briefs and discarding both over the side of the bed before he moved to straddle Jack, trapping Jack’s legs between his own.

Jack was warm and shy and beautiful, and Piki knew in his heart there was nothing and nobody he could ever love this much.

Piki dragged a hand down Jack’s chest, feeling the hitches of breath and the twitching of his stomach, wrapped a hand around Jack’s cock and started to stroke, thinking about what he could give up for Jack. He could give up the outside world, easily. He could give up the upper-middle-class parties, the wine, the three course dinners. He could give up studying, and drama, and the theatre. He could give up poetry. He could give up writing.

And Jack would never, ever ask him to, because Jack was everything he’d ever wanted and more than he could ever deserve.

 

When Jack’s breath started hitching too often, his hips bucking with urgency, Piki let go of his cock and picked up one of the lube sachets, ripping it open with his teeth and thickly coating his index and middle fingers with the contents before moving to kneel between Jack’s legs instead of over them. “Let me know if this hurts,” he said, rubbing the tips of his fingers around Jack’s entrance before coating them again, pressing in a little further each time before returning to add more lube. “It’s not supposed to.” Despite what certain university flatmates seemed to think. Jack nodded and kept his head tilted forward, watching where Piki’s hand disappeared between his legs with apparent fascination.

By the time Piki had worked in enough lube he could finger-fuck Jack with ease, his headache had mostly faded to a dull throb and his cock had taken a great deal of interest in the proceedings. It was almost a relief to roll a condom over it, knowing the slight barrier against sensation would help avoid a repeat of previous incidents.

It was still only a slight barrier though, and Piki’s stomach clenched at the thought of making a mess again - especially here, in Jack’s territory rather than his own.

Jack’s hands settled on his hips, trembling, and Piki looked up at their owner, at Jack’s flushed and nervous expression, swallowed down his own anxiety.

“Please,” Jack said, and the last of Piki’s doubts died as he hooked Jack’s legs around his waist, rubbed some more lube over his cock just to be sure, and pushed in.

Jack was hot and tight around him in a way no condom could hide, and Piki fisted both hands in Jack’s bed sheets, thinking of the twelve times table, of reality TV, of the time he fell asleep watching Citizen Kane because it bored him to tears, tried physically to concentrate on what remained of his headache. He just needed a few seconds - something to take his finger off the trigger, so to speak - and after a few deep breaths, Piki nodded to himself, reopened his eyes, and looked at Jack again.

Jack nodded back at him, fingers tightening around Piki’s hips, and before Piki allowed himself to move he took one of Jack’s hands in his own, guided it to Jack’s cock.

“Okay,” Jack said, starting to stroke, and Piki caught himself flushing before he pulled out from Jack carefully and pushed back in, settling himself first before he finally found a rhythm, though he couldn’t resist breaking it once in a while to steal another kiss from Jack’s lips.

Whatever shyness Jack had felt about stroking his cock in front of Piki seemed to fade as Piki fucked him, Jack’s hand fast and rough while Piki kept to steady, deep rolls of his hips, wanting to feel every inch as he pulled out and pushed in, to feel how Jack’s body adjusted around him over and over.

Piki didn’t have any words to spare, breathing being a struggle in and of itself when he had Jack around him, underneath him, letting him have this when no one could ever deserve it. Jack, on the other hand, was a talker, and the increasing desperation in Jack’s rough, sweet voice was killing him. “Please, Piki, Piki, oh, please, I need, Piki, more, please, Piki -”

Piki curved one hand around Jack’s ass, pressed the other against Jack’s headboard for leverage, and endeavoured to give Jack everything he’d asked for, coming so hard he couldn’t breathe when Jack arched up beneath him with a barely stifled wail that Piki hoped to god hadn’t woken anyone up.

Jack still took a few strokes longer to come, but not so many as to leave Piki feeling ashamed, not so many that he didn’t get to enjoy Jack clenching around him through orgasm.

Disposing of the condom afterwards and wiping Jack’s stomach clean with a t-shirt wasn’t exactly the height of romance, but Piki didn’t care. Theirs wasn’t a traditional romance. Jack was so much more than a Mills and Boon heroine.

“Thanks for staying,” Jack said as he curled around Piki afterwards, arms and legs settling warm and heavy against or over his own.

Piki wanted to reply with something that didn’t sound cliché or trite, something that said “I love you” without the phrase itself being necessary, but apparently a great orgasm killed his brain cells even more effectively than a regular one. “You’re welcome,” he settled on, pressing a kiss to Jack’s sweat-dampened forehead.

It would have to do. He’d have plenty of time to be clever later.

 

Morning brought cold toast and fresh coffee, and Piki enjoyed both while starting up his laptop at Jack’s side. Pitch had fired off another email about how Piki had better not be dead and how their mother was furious because how dare he miss dinner with the Sharmas etcetera, etcetera, and Piki smiled to himself. He had absolutely no doubt he had brought shame and disgrace on himself and the family. He also had absolutely no doubt that his escape to Jack’s was worth it.

Piki wrote a quick reply to reassure Pitch that of course he wasn’t dead, Pitch wasn’t that lucky, and advising him to take care of their mother before she angered herself into a stroke. He would come back when he wanted to come back and that certainly wouldn’t be for a few days yet.

“Or a w-week,” Jack suggested, and Piki laughed before adding “or weeks” to the end of his email.

Pitch was going to be livid with him when he returned, despite Piki’s absence meaning he would get to be the centre of attention at every family event. Piki was rather looking forward to it.

It would give him an excuse to explain exactly what he had been doing on his vacation.

And to who.


	6. A blatant excuse to put Proto in a dress (Piki/Proto, Nightmare Dork University, General Audiences)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Piki/Proto  
>  **Rating:** General Audiences  
>  **Warning:** Cousin/cousin incest  
>  **Summary:** Another one that is pretty much what it says on the tin. Piki knows better than to ask Proto questions, but can't resist anyway.

Piki learned early on to avoid asking Proto questions unless he genuinely wanted to know the answer. Proto’s default expression of pleasant neutrality hid a mind that loved to analyse and catalogue the reactions of others, and if given a chance to dissect someone’s thoughts by provoking them with overly honest answers, he would leap at it. One trick was to try to avoid talking around him, but he had a talent for interpreting different kinds of silence too; the only defence that ever seemed to count for anything was to be just as honest back, and brutally so.

Piki wanted the answer to one question, so he asked it.

“Why are you wearing a dress?”

Even with his back exposed to the elements, shifting muscles and scarred skin on proud display, Proto’s body language gave away nothing. “An exchange of interests. I’ve often wondered how it feels to stand on skin in stiletto heels, and I’ve found someone who’ll permit me to find out. All it costs is the wearing of this dress.” He turned around in his chair, garish orange-red lipstick highlighting his smile. “I’ve done more for less.”

Piki’s mouth felt dry as he took in the full sight - the purple velvet halterneck scooping awkwardly where it expected breasts to be, ending a good six inches short of Proto’s ankles. A second-hand dress, clearly, but the stilettos were a perfect fit, the black patent leather either new or well looked after.

Piki wondered if the shoes were a gift from Proto’s suitor, or if they had been waiting in Proto’s wardrobe for their chance to shine, and felt an abrupt and peculiar twinge of jealousy.

“What does he want you to wear under it?” Piki asked, testing the waters. He knew the second Proto had looked at him he would have seen the dress had stirred a certain kind of interest, so there was no point in denying it.

“‘He’? That’s presumptuous,” Proto said, spreading his legs and settling his hands between them so that the dress gave a vague outline of what hid beneath it. “Even if you are correct. Do you want to find out for yourself?”

Piki thought about it - the possibility of finding lingerie, or nothing, or Proto’s generally preferred attire of threadbare briefs or boxers.

There was something exciting about not knowing the answer, and he bent down to kiss the soft, almost waxy surface of Proto’s lipstick-smeared lips, careful not to smudge them.

Proto laughed and ran his tongue over Piki’s chin before leaning back, his expression at once playful and smug. “I’ll tell you what; my friend is on strict orders to keep their hands below my hips. If you’re awake when I get back, you can explore everywhere they can’t.”

Promising time to Proto was a dangerous affair, one that was known to occasionally end in tears, blood, terror, and combinations of the three.

On the other hand, all three were effective reminders of the fact Piki was just as alive and real as he tried to make the characters in his plays.

“Deal,” Piki said, stealing another kiss before offering Proto a hand as he stood.

It wasn’t needed. Proto had clearly practiced wearing the stilettos before.

Piki rather wished he’d been around to see it.


	7. After The Storm (Pitch/Pitchiner, Nightmare Dork University, Teen and Up Audiences)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Pitch/Pitchiner  
>  **Rating:** Teen and Up Audiences  
>  **Summary:** Pitchiner and Pitch broke up not long before he joined the army; Pitchiner returns to fix things with a vengeance.

Pitch infinitely preferred giving revision lectures to standard lectures. Attendance wasn’t compulsory, and as a result the worst troublemakers tended to skip them, leaving the lecture hall quieter and reducing the number of truly inane questions he had to answer. By and large he enjoyed giving the lessons instead of resenting having to teach, and going over material that had been discussed previously enabled him to speed through most of it instead of getting caught up explaining points that anyone who had read their assigned material ought to have understood.

There was usually a little noise - rustling of paper, slurping of coffee, hushed whispers - but very rarely to the obnoxious degree he frequently had to shout down in full lectures. It allowed him to relax, insofar as he ever relaxed.

It was therefore an unpleasant surprise when a crackle of static and a squeal of feedback cut into the speaker system, followed by a woman’s voice singing, “Who knows what tomorrow brings?”

Pitch rolled his eyes before turning to face his audience of twelve, looking for signs of who was responsible, or might have a significant other who was responsible. Confusion on everyone’s faces indicated it would be the latter case - either that, or someone in that hall was a better actor off the stage than on it - and Pitch folded his arms, drumming his fingers as he waited for the music to switch off.

He absolutely did not jump when the side door slammed open. He would, however, concede to backing up against his desk courtesy of his legs turning to jelly when he recognised the intruder, who was about as far from Richard Gere in a uniform as any man could be, even if he had joined the military.

“Get out,” Pitch would have said if he’d had any sense, common or otherwise, but he did manage to snap, “What the hell are you doing here?”

Pitchiner didn’t look the slightest bit sheepish or shame-faced, and just said, “Fixing things,” before he scooped Pitch up into his arms and carried him out to whoops and cheers as the song on the speakers reached its chorus.

 

They didn’t get far before Pitch’s struggling forced Pitchiner to put him down, and Pitch repaid the favour by slapping him as hard as he could. “What was that?” Pitch yelled, hearing and resenting the hysterical tone of his voice. “What the hell was that all about? You can’t just - you can’t -”

“I’m going to make it right,” Pitchiner said, grabbing Pitch’s shoulders and looking him in the eye, and Pitch hated that he’d missed that broad, dumb, stupidly handsome face, that the two years spent convincing himself he didn’t miss it were worthless. “I fucked up big time and I let you kick me out when I should have said sorry, and I am. Pitch, I’m sorry.”

Pitch’s stomach dropped out. He’d clung to Pitchiner’s lack of apology as a reason to throw him out - a reason to be without guilt, something solid he could point to if anyone cared to ask why he’d dumped him without ceremony. Throwing Pitchiner’s bags out hadn’t felt good, but it had felt just.

Pitch grit his teeth and went to slap Pitchiner again but found his aim thrown off by Pitchiner kissing him, and no matter how hard he tried to shove Pitchiner away, his arms refused to obey him, going weak as they rested on Pitchiner’s chest.

“I hate you,” Pitch said, not meaning a word, and Pitchiner’s hands cupped the back of his head, huge and warm and soothing.

“I hate you too,” Pitchiner replied, and Pitch knew exactly what he meant by it, kissed him back all the harder for being as infuriating and surprising and gorgeous as he’d been the day they met.

 

Kissing behind the drama building felt a little too juvenile for Pitch to enjoy it freely for long, even if the part of him that loved fiction kept pointing out the value of clichés. Public territory was more neutral than Pitchiner’s car, and his flat carried the risk of a surprise visit from Piki who was not in a state of mind to accept someone else getting a happy ending, so Pitch didn’t lead them far. It was a grey enough day for the park on campus to be near empty, and Pitch waited for Pitchiner to sit down before joining him on the bench, enjoying the warmth of being close to him and the idea of having control over the situation, at least to some degree.

“Why now?” Pitch asked, knowing it wasn’t the anniversary of their break-up, or their first meeting, or anyone’s birthday. It was a very ordinary day, not one that called for celebrating, or for distracting himself with a trip to the theatre.

He corrected himself internally; it had been a very ordinary day. It wasn’t now.

“Missing your ass isn’t good enough?” Pitchiner teased, his tone flat and hands fidgeting. “I was just sorting some things through. Priorities.” He shrugged, brows drawn tight. “It wasn’t anything big, just - I knew a guy, friend of a guy in my squad, ‘bout the same age and same size as me, and he died. Never really thought about dying before. And I thought about all the shit he probably meant to do and didn’t.” Pitchiner shrugged again, fell silent, and Pitch reached up, scratched his nails over the back of Pitchiner’s neck.

Pitch wanted to distract him from whatever was going on inside his head, whether it was a bullet or a coffin or just a name on a list, said, “You were saying something about my ass?”

Pitchiner snorted and tilted his head back. “Hell yeah. I left odes to it on bathroom walls. Illustrated ones.”

Pitch’s eye twitched.

“I’m joking, dear.”

“I hope for your sake you are,” Pitch said, feeling his blood race and uncertain whether it was rushing in anger or at the memories that particular pet name brought to mind.

Pitchiner’s eye line gave that answer away, and Pitch felt a hand drop onto his knee, running oh so slowly up his thigh before Pitchiner asked, “They haven’t taken down the hedges by Sociology, have they?”

Every ounce of self-preservation in Pitch said he was making a mistake. He knew what Pitchiner was capable of, what he’d said, why Pitch had thrown him out in the first place.

But Pitchiner had come back, and he’d apologised. It was more than anyone else had done.

“Let’s find out.”

 

The hedges by Sociology still stood tall, and were still poorly tended, and still hid two people if they didn’t mind getting their hands and knees dirty.

Pitch had missed some parts of Pitchiner more than others. It was good to feel they hadn’t changed.

And his gut told him their owner might have. For the better.


	8. New Foundations (Jack/Piki, Nightmare Dork University, General Audiences)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Jack/Piki  
>  **Rating:** General Audiences  
>  **Summary:** A short fic about Jack and Piki, just after their own reunion.

Jack loved Piki. He knew that much for certain - despite how unhealthy Piki had been for him, how unhealthy they’d been for each other, he had fallen in love with all of Piki’s sharp, jagged edges.

Piki hadn’t loved him back. He’d loved an idea of him, and he’d held onto it obsessively, tried to shape Jack into the delicate nymph he’d worshipped in his plays and poems.

Learning to be around Piki again was a strange process because he knew how much he’d hurt Piki by leaving, and how dangerously comfortable with Piki’s smothering he’d allowed himself to become. It was stranger still because of how much he genuinely wanted their relationship to function - it was all too tempting to pretend nothing was wrong, to pretend he’d only come back for Piki and that he was perfectly happy and issue free himself now, but a quick fix like that wouldn’t work and he knew it.

What he could do was be honest, even if it meant opening old wounds or creating new ones. He wasn’t blunt, and he tempered the harsher truths with touch, waiting until he could hold Piki in his arms or take his hand before saying anything.

Their old foundations were built on sand, and Jack was determined to build their new foundations on stone.

 

Piki’s home was the hardest for either of them to deal with. Piki hadn’t changed it since Jack left, and Jack couldn’t help but be hyper-aware of that, even as Piki leant against Jack’s chest on the sofa and curled both arms around him, all pretence of watching a movie together gone.

Piki’s hands shook with the effort of being gentle, as if he wanted to cling to Jack for dear life but feared he was too fragile to bear it, and Jack couldn’t stand the desperation of the act.

It wasn’t that he hated being held lightly, but he resented the guilt it made him feel, the way it made his conscience try to forget that he’d left because of Piki as much as he had for himself.

Jack closed his eyes and took a deep breath before telling Piki, “You don’t h-have to be gentle with me.”

Piki’s arms tensed but didn’t tighten, and Jack muted the television before sliding his own arms under Piki’s and wrapping them tight around the slim back, pressing a kiss into dark hair before tilting his head to rest it against Piki’s.

He didn’t hear a sob, just a few hitched breaths, and felt a damp spot spreading through the material of his sweater.

“We’ll be okay,” Jack said, quiet and not quite as confident as he’d like to be. “We’re going to be okay.”


	9. The One Where Piki and Pitch Are Too Close (Piki/Pitch/Pitchiner, Nightmare Dork University, Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Piki/Pitch/Pitchiner  
>  **Rating:** Explicit  
>  **Warning:** Themes of incest  
>  **Summary:** Pitchiner knew he was in trouble from the moment he saw the twins' double bed.

Pitchiner had guessed some of what would come with the territory when he started dating one of the Black brothers; word got around campus pretty fast as to just how inseparable the two were once people noticed they would sit together for lectures, leave for breaks together, share computers and notes and books and food as freely as if they all held the same value.

It was creepy, to most people, although there was some debate as to whether their variety of creepy was worse or better than The Cousin’s. Pitchiner had met Proto on a few occasions. He didn’t particularly fancy repeating the experience.

Pitchiner had always kind of liked creepy though, and he definitely liked Pitch, liked his temper and his histrionics and the way he’d tense up if Pitchiner nipped at his nose or his lips in public. He wasn’t quite so sure he liked the way Piki would watch their kissing with eyes that weren’t so much judging as intensely observing, like Piki was internally taking notes about Pitchiner’s technique.

Pitchiner had taken one look at the double bed in Piki and Pitch’s bedroom and known he should have run screaming, but he’d let Piki sit and pretend to watch TV while he and Pitch made out on the sofa; he’d let Piki come along on their dates, flicking through pages of a book in between sipping his tea or wine and drumming his fingers on the table whenever the conversation quietened.

It was beyond surreal and all the way out into _am I actually high off my face_ strange when Pitchiner felt Piki’s fingers tugging his shirt free before working on the buttons of Pitch’s own, Pitchiner breaking away from the perfectly savage combination of biting and licking that Pitch considered a kiss to find Piki had stripped down to pants and an open shirt, and seemed intent on stripping Pitch to the same.

Pitchiner had been told on numerous occasions the reasons he was going to Hell, but he had a feeling this one pretty much sealed the deal.

“Should I even be here?” Pitchiner asked, teasing, and Pitch slapped him in response before jumping on him, practically gnawing at his lips as they fell onto the bed together, and Pitchiner couldn’t entirely bring himself to give a shit about Piki moving to lie down next to them when he had Pitch underneath him, writhing and scratching like a cat in heat.

 

They held hands.

They didn’t jerk each other off, didn’t urge each other on with dirty talk, didn’t even kiss.

They held hands.

It didn’t matter that Pitchiner had Pitch’s legs wrapped around his waist, that Pitchiner fucked him hard enough that without the support of the pillow under his head Pitch would probably have dislodged something, it didn’t matter how rough he was with Pitch or Pitch was with him. Piki just lay there, watching Pitch and holding his hand while Pitch squeezed his hand back tight.

No amount of biting at Pitch’s neck or collarbone or chest would get him to let go, and Pitchiner had to give in trying to break that bond, guessed any attempt to prise Pitch’s hand away from Piki’s would get him thrown out of bed and possibly kicked in the balls.

When Pitchiner wrapped both arms around Pitch’s back and lifted him up, close enough to coming that he felt justified in bouncing Pitch in his lap like his own personal fuck toy, Piki sat up alongside him, keeping hold of Pitch’s hand even then, and Pitchiner watched Pitch’s attention drift away from him to his twin, watched Pitch’s heavy-lidded eyes focus on Piki’s.

Pitchiner wondered why he didn’t exactly feel jealous, got his answer when Pitch hissed out an approximation of his name through clenched teeth and dug the nails of his free hand into Pitchiner’s back, clawing deep enough that Pitchiner could swear he felt blood welling up at the points that stung.

Pitchiner came hard, Pitch following him mere moments after with a wail he muffled by biting Pitchiner’s chest, and it felt weirdly _right_ to have Piki guide him into lying down, removing and tying off the used condom and actually making sure it ended up in a bin. It felt right to have Piki ease Pitch into curling up against him after cleaning up his stomach and chest with a handful of tissues.

Pitchiner didn’t normally like having his afterglow interfered with in any way, shape, or form, but it didn’t feel like interference when Piki slipped an arm around Pitch’s waist and spooned around him, the other arm reaching to take Pitch’s hand and link fingers with it on Pitchiner’s stomach.

People had said around campus that the Blacks should have been born conjoined, and Pitchiner couldn’t entirely disagree with that - they certainly seemed to work at becoming as close to it as they could without surgery. What he did disagree with was the suggestion there was anything wrong with it - from a practical perspective, anyway, if not necessarily a moral one.

Whatever had made Pitch and Piki this way wasn’t about to change, and Pitchiner had no plans on being the force that separated them.


	10. The Guilty and the Innocent (Jack/Piki, Dorks of the Opera, Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Dorks of the Opera (a Nightmare Dork University/Phantom of the Opera fusion)  
>  **Pairing:** Jack/Piki  
>  **Rating:** Explicit  
>  **Warning:** Brief references to past abuse  
>  **Summary:** Piki catches Jack masturbating; Jack is ashamed of himself, and Piki is determined to prove that Jack isn't the one with something to be ashamed of.

Piki had spent the better part of a lifetime constructing his aviary, always wanting to but never truly believing he would find a songbird worth keeping.

He hadn’t dared hope except in the deepest of dreams that his captive might want to stay.

 

Jack was the perfect vessel for his angelic voice, moon-pale and barely marked by the world’s cruelty, and Piki watched him exploring his catacombs, wishing he could give Jack so much more than a mere home. Piki would carve out an entire city for Jack if he could, an underground Paris free from the corruption of its spoiled and decadent surface.

He’d lost track of how many times he’d asked Jack if he liked his new home, but Piki remembered every “Yes”, every “Thank you”, every shy or nervous smile. He liked best when Jack showed it without being asked - when he looked through the boxes of old costumes with such excitement it was as if they contained gifts, or when he stopped to admire a wall hanging as if it were a great work of art.

Jack slept as peacefully as a child in the bed Piki had made for him, and the sight of him doing so, the thought he felt safe enough to do so, had Piki’s chest aching in a way he couldn’t quantify.

 

Jack had made a point of wishing Piki goodnight each and every evening before retiring to bed, so Piki felt discomforted when he returned from sourcing food to find the curtains around Jack’s bed drawn. Admittedly he had been running a little late, but Jack had not yet eaten and as a result Piki had expected the boy to stay up for supper.

Piki’s stomach dropped out when shifting sheets and a muffled whine caught his attention, his legs feeling heavy as he moved closer to the bed, keeping out of the light in case his shadow gave him away.

Jack’s shirt and raised legs hid much of what he was doing, the small gap in the bedside curtains affording Piki the narrowest of viewpoints, but the furtive, rhythmic movements of Jack’s hands gave away the secret, and Piki stood still a moment, transfixed by the sight before him. Jack had overwhelmed his senses before with the clear, piercing bell of his voice, but while that had felt like a moment of religious ecstasy, this was something entirely human, entirely base, yet no less beautiful for it.

The sweet, wet sounds of skin on skin and Jack’s shaking breaths made Piki hungry for more than the curtains allowed him to see, made him want at least a glimpse of Jack’s face, and he cleared his throat before lifting the curtains to dip beneath them.

Jack curled up, hands tugging his shirt down to cover as much skin as possible, his face burning red with embarrassment.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Piki said, lowering the curtain behind himself and taking a seat on the bed.

“You - you weren’t sup-supposed to, I’m sorry,” Jack said, breathless and anxious, the back of his shirt riding when he squirmed to show more of his thighs, a tantalising glimpse of the curve above them.

“You don’t have to stop on my account,” Piki said, watched Jack lift his head a little, not quite meeting his eyes.

“It’s a sin,” Jack said, hesitant at first before spitting out, “I’m disgusting.”

“You couldn’t be disgusting if you tried,” Piki snapped back, taking one of Jack’s hands in his own and pulling it forcefully to his lips before kissing it, tasting salt and a curious bitterness.

Jack met Piki’s gaze then, shaking his head minutely as if he disagreed but didn’t want to. “It’s wrong,” he said, expression as anguished as it was confused. “When I was caught - they thrashed me. Good boys don’t do it.”

Piki snarled at the thought of Jack, his Jack, humiliated and beaten for touching the same skin God had given him, skin that begged to be touched, and squeezed Jack’s hand tight to distract himself from the anger. “I know sin, Jack,” he said once he trusted himself to speak without raising his voice. “Perhaps better than any other man alive. You are no sinner, and you will never have to keep this secret from me.”

Piki took the hem of Jack’s shirt in his free hand, tugging it free from the confines of the hand Jack still had balled in his lap, and pushed it up until the material bunched around Jack’s upper chest and armpits, gathering just above dark pink nipples.

Piki breathed out shakily, hardly daring to look, let alone touch. “God did not cut you from the same cloth as the rest of us.”

Jack flushed, chest rising and falling rapidly, and Piki leant in to steal a kiss as brief and chaste as his perverted soul would permit.

“Is it a sin if you touch me?” Jack asked, honest curiosity in his voice, and Piki hated himself for the answer he knew he would give, hated his lust and his greedy, tainted hands.

“No,” Piki replied, his deceptive tongue hiding the _not for you_ as he lowered his head, pressing a kiss to the dip of Jack’s stomach, closing his eyes and lingering a moment. Jack’s skin was soft and warm, the rhythm of his breath hypnotic, and Piki didn’t want to move and lose that comfort.

The press of fingers into his own hair, cautious and light and so kind Piki couldn’t bear it had him sitting up sharply, staring at Jack in disbelief.

“I wanted to touch you,” Jack said, and Piki balled his hands into fists, scarcely remembering how to breathe. In all his yearning, all his longing, he hadn’t dared dream that someone would see his sallow skin and imperfect frame as worthy of touch.

“You may,” Piki said, catching Jack’s hand when it reached for his mask, but allowing Jack to stroke his neck, down the silk of his shirt, fingertips catching and dragging lightly over a nipple.

“You’re so thin,” Jack said, pressing his hand flat against Piki’s stomach before swallowing and looking up. “Would you lie with me?”

Piki froze for what felt like far too long before gathering himself enough to nod, unbuttoning the layers of his clothes while watching Jack wriggle out of his own shirt, finding his hands shaking by the time he finished stripping bare.

For all Jack’s shyness, it was Jack who reached out to take Piki in his arms, Jack who parted his legs and drew Piki in between them. Jack seemed to have an idea of what he wanted, while Piki felt torn as to where, or even if, he should start.

 

At first, it was all Piki could do to breathe. Jack was slight in build, but up close, _this_ close, there was so much of him to explore that it was overwhelming. All the beauty of Jack’s voice seemed expressed in his form, and Piki was torn in half by the part of him that felt unworthy of touching it, and the part that wanted to claim every inch for himself.

Jack helped Piki make up his mind by sliding a hand down Piki’s front to grasp his cock, bucking up hungrily when Piki returned the favour.

“Perfect,” Piki gasped without thinking before leaning in to give Jack a kiss that pushed past the boundaries of chastity. Jack held still at the initial press of Piki’s lips to his own, shy and reserved, but as they found a rhythm together with their hands Jack’s reserve gave way to the same curiosity he had shown in exploring his new home. Jack let Piki kiss him as hard and as deep as he wanted, and before long willingly slipped his own tongue between Piki’s lips, the wet slide of it driving Piki towards madness.

Sucking on Jack’s tongue quickly became Piki’s favourite new pastime, even above fisting Jack’s cock, and it was a mistake to pull back and look at Jack’s kiss-flushed face, the tip of his tongue still showing between his teeth. Piki’s body didn’t give him warning enough to suppress his orgasm, muscles tightening and tensing so quickly he could barely groan before coming over Jack’s hand and the pale stretch of Jack’s stomach.

If he’d had even a second longer to think, or if Jack’s expression had differed in the slightest, the shame that crept up on him for finishing so quickly would have taken a cruel toll; thankfully, Jack’s expression was not one that mocked or even pitied Piki’s failure. Jack did not look disgusted or confused - he looked almost awed, and Jack asked before Piki could find words for a question himself, “Did I feel that good to you?”

Piki nodded, letting his cock slip limply out of Jack’s hand before he tightened his grip on Jack and pumped hard, no longer distracted by his own arousal. “You undid me with your voice before I saw an inch of you,” Piki said as Jack’s hands settled on his ass, pulling him close enough that Jack could rut against the groove where Piki’s thigh met his hip. “The very sight of you could finish someone.”

Jack’s nails dug in painfully, scratching welts Piki looked forward to healing from, and his thrusts into Piki’s fist turned erratic; Piki had rather hoped for words, but there was a coarse music in the gasps and keening cries as Jack neared orgasm, a music he could appreciate all the more with a clear head and softened cock.

Jack bucked and twisted and cried out loud as he came, wetness coating Piki’s hand and both their stomachs, and Piki made sure to commit every second to memory of how Jack looked in that moment. Every cliché about exquisite agony held true for Jack - he looked like he could not stand it, his eyes shut tight and teeth clenched, and when he fell back against the bed afterwards he collapsed so thoroughly it was as if his bones had turned to liquid.

“It’s better with company, isn’t it?” Piki asked, prompting for an answer he hadn’t known for certain himself until Jack’s lips had destroyed him.

“Yes,” Jack said, reaching up to grip Piki by the back of the head and pulling him down into a kiss that was as wet and filthy as the mess smeared across both their stomachs. “With, with you it is.”

 

Piki lost track of their kisses soon after that, more concerned with the feel of them than their number, with how the come and sweat on their skin turned tacky as it dried.

The idea of leaving Jack’s bed seemed criminal, but as much as Piki wished to stay, there were risks he could not take. Jack had seen as much of Piki as he could allow, and for all that Piki loved Jack, he could not trust him - not with Jack’s curious streak.

It was safer to lie at Jack’s side, indulging in kisses and caresses until Jack grew drowsy, and slip away in silence when drowsiness gave way to sleep.

He didn’t have to travel far for a locked door and privacy, and when Piki wrapped both arms around his pillow and held it to his chest, it was easy to keep a face in mind when he closed his eyes. Piki knew now the taste of Jack’s skin, how Jack sounded when he came, how he looked when release left him boneless.

He didn’t know how long the waking dream of Jack’s presence would last, but he intended to make every second count. He’d lived a nightmare long enough that it only seemed fair to stretch this momentary sweetness out.

 

Jack was more than any mere songbird. He was a moon, a guiding light in a world Piki had ever only known for darkness, and Piki knew better than to think he could capture light in his hands, or in any cage he constructed for it.

Regardless of what he knew, he still hoped.


	11. On Forging and Breaking Rituals (Piki/Pitch/Proto, Nightmare Dork University, Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Piki/Pitch/Proto  
>  **Rating:** Explicit  
>  **Warning:** Brother/brother/cousin incest.  
>  **Summary:** Theirs is a family of loners, but there are ways of being lonely together.

Pitch had always felt he understood people better than Piki did. Piki’s successes meant he saw a different version of the world to Pitch, one where he was allowed more freedom to be eccentric, more freedom to revel in his moments of depression or hysteria when they came. Piki was allowed to be a tortured artist, so long as he was successful.

That wasn’t to say Piki was blind to how others viewed their relationship - just that he paid less attention to the whispers behind their backs, and as a result suffered more when he overheard them. He didn’t build up walls of cynicism and anger quite as effectively as Pitch did, and it was Pitch who would have to crawl into bed with Piki after a family event, wrap an arm around his waist, and tell him not to pay attention to the sneers. It was Pitch who had to press kisses into Piki’s hair and comfort him, promise him that the whispers meant nothing, not as long as they had each other.

It was lonely, at times. And then Proto crept in alongside them.

 

Proto had been a regular at family events for years, but he had kept his distance for some time, schmoozing with aunties and uncles and second-cousins twice removed while avoiding the corners Piki and Pitch carved out for themselves. He never joined in with the whispering and sniggering, never cast a disdainful glance when he caught them holding hands or adjusting each other’s hair, each other’s shirts.

He never interrupted the whispering and sniggering either.

It was part of why Pitch offered him nothing more than a level glare when Proto finally broke with the family’s unspoken protocol and interrupted Pitch and Piki with a statement that didn’t revolve solely around their artistic merits.

“I wonder how much of what I’ve heard is true,” Proto said, hip slightly cocked as if he were leaning against thin air. “All things considered we’re not supposed to talk about it, some people have exceedingly vivid imaginations.”

Piki sat stiff and still, and Pitch clutched his hand tighter, brushed his thumb over Piki’s wrist. “I’m sure they’ve made up their minds regardless of the truth.”

Proto tilted his head, looking faintly disappointed. “So the rumours are just rumours, then?”

Pitch tugged on Piki’s hand and stood up, urged Piki to join him. “They’re whatever people want them to be,” Pitch hissed, freezing only when Proto hooked a finger under his chin, just for a second, just long enough to get Pitch to look at him for a moment.

“I was hoping they were true,” Proto said, before letting Pitch drag Piki outside for fresh air and the safety of darkness.

 

It was the first time Proto had ever bothered to talk to them, and it wasn’t to be the last. Piki had been terrified of what Proto meant at first - someone who was willing to admit he had heard rumours about them, someone who didn’t make a habit of leering or grimacing at them for their existence - and Pitch had hated Proto for upsetting the delicate stalemate they had reached with their family.

If Proto had been an outsider, it would have been easier. As their cousin, it was harder to view him as anything _but_ family, the same family that had praised their work while shunning everything that gave them the strength to carry on with that work. It was hard not to see him as an intruder, even a spy of sorts, someone who wanted to hear them admit to what they were so he could mock it or worse, confirm it to others who would only ever tolerate it as a whisper.

When Proto took them aside after the exchange of belated Christmas presents on New Year’s Eve, and pressed a key into Pitch’s hand before kissing him lightly, but long enough to not be chaste, Pitch’s heart had raced - racing all the more when Proto kissed Piki in turn, offering him another key.

“You aren’t the only ones in this family who don’t fit in,” Proto said. “Some of us just hide it better. Well. One of us.”

After Proto left, Pitch turned to Piki and compared their keys, realised they were the same cut, and the pattern etched into them identical. Keys for the loft - where Proto had slept every time he visited, and where Piki and Pitch had spent hours exploring the storage spaces and each other when they were young enough to be allowed freedom in the house.

Pitch still didn’t trust Proto, but Piki did, and if Piki wished to follow after Proto, Pitch would follow Piki in taking that risk.

 

In the dead hours of the morning, when those who were still awake were either too drowsy or too drunk to care about who moved where in the house, Piki finished the tune he’d been playing on the piano to head upstairs, Pitch following after him. The house somehow hadn’t seemed so dark or large or menacing since they were little, and there was a strange nostalgia to the fear gripping Pitch’s stomach as he followed Piki up to the loft, gripping Piki’s free arm tight as Piki turned the key in the lock.

The loft hadn’t changed much since they last saw it, save for the space that had been cleared to allow a mattress on the floor, and Proto didn’t seem like a monster in the dull light, just a human, just their cousin.

Pitch locked the door behind them, cocked his head at the pile of oddities Proto had gathered by the bed - water and a few leftovers from the buffet made sense, as did wet wipes, but the scissors, clothes pegs, duct tape and saran wrap all seemed a little out of place.

Pitch spotted lube and clutched for Piki’s hand, found it sweating just as much as his own was.

“Forgive me if my tools are on the crude side,” Proto said, smiling as he stripped out of his shirt and the hideous scarf that had been his one concession to personality when otherwise playing a dutiful family member. “I was working on short notice, and your mother hasn’t exactly left any entertainment around.” Proto curled a finger to beckon them closer, before resting that same finger on their linked hands once they were in his reach. “I’d like to play a game, but you need to know the rules first. Red means stop. Amber means wait. Green means go.”

Pitch’s fingers slipped and slid against Piki’s, sweat making it harder to maintain his grip, and he pulled free at last, wiped his hand down on his trousers. “And what do you get out of this?” He asked, the hardness in his pants distracting, but far from distracting enough to make him forget how most people viewed his and Piki’s relationship, even when they were only guessing at the full extent of it. Proto could call this a game as much as he liked - it didn’t change the danger Piki and Pitch had put themselves in just by showing up in Proto’s bedroom together.

Proto smirked, nodded to himself before looking at Piki. “Sensation. You know what this family does. You two have each other to be alive for.”

“It isn’t any easier when they like you, is it?” Piki asked, and Proto shrugged before turning his back to them, continuing to strip.

“This game’s a lot more fun when you’re naked,” Proto said, shoulders tense, and Pitch knew better than to ask for the reason behind that tension, nuzzled Piki’s head lightly with his own before peeling out of his dress shirt and tie, wondering at the scratches and bruises that marred Proto’s back as they were exposed.

No, they weren’t the only ones in the family who didn’t fit in.

 

Pitch refused to be tied up at first, though he was more than happy to watch Proto go to work on Piki, saran wrap circling wrists and ankles to protect them before duct tape bound them together. Piki didn’t say “Red” once, though he paused on “Amber” a few times, seemingly more out of curiosity than out of concern or fear. Piki had always been fascinated by new things, documenting them almost analytically in case he could use them in future works.

There was a reason Pitch read over any of Piki’s work before allowing it to be published. Some of his writing gave away too many secrets.

Proto ran his hands down Piki’s arms after finishing binding them behind his back, rubbing them briskly to warm them up before he rested his chin on Piki’s shoulder, looking over at Pitch. “You are allowed to join us,” Proto said, and Pitch rolled his eyes; there wasn’t a moment of any given day where he was anything other than joined to Piki. He knew damned near everything his brother felt, everything he thought.

Piki tilted his head back, whispered something in Proto’s ear, and Proto grinned before reaching over, grabbing Pitch’s wrists and pulling until Pitch’s arms were behind Piki’s back as well. “Happy now?” Pitch grumbled, relenting only slightly when Piki frowned at him, and swallowing down nerves he didn’t want to admit to having when he heard and felt the crinkle of saran wrap as it circled his own wrists.

The logical part of his mind begged him to say “Amber”, but his stomach screamed “Green”, and it was hard not to listen to his stomach when Piki’s face was inches from his own and flushed.

Only a touch of manhandling later meant his wrists being taped to Piki’s, their hands brushing against each other’s at an awkward angle, and Proto looked over Piki’s shoulder again, grinning all too wickedly at Pitch when their eyes met. “You two do look good together,” Proto said.

“We have admirable genes,” Pitch replied before choosing to ignore Proto in favour of kissing Piki, feeling Piki arch against him in response, their tied hands straining to try and balance the movement.

Proto didn’t take the ignorance as a threat, just a challenge, and Pitch soon found the kiss interrupted by Piki hissing and gritting his teeth, eyes screwed shut. Pitch knew that look, even before he could hear the wet and slick sounds of fingering, knew that look from every time he’d told Piki to relax, every time he’d told him to breathe out, asked him if it felt good.

Proto didn’t ask; whether he was confident in his abilities, or more interested in how Piki felt around his fingers than how his fingers felt to Piki, Pitch wasn’t sure. Pitch asked, though, asked without a word, nipping at Piki’s ear with his teeth, biting along his jaw, pressing his lips into the hollow of Piki’s neck. Piki’s breathing didn’t feel pained, it felt overwhelmed, and Pitch was willing to accept that.

“Here’s the big question,” Proto began, interrupting a silence Pitch had just started to appreciate and grabbing a wet wipe to clean his fingers. “Do you want to fuck him while I watch, Pitch, or should I?”

Pitch bucked against Piki without thinking, the reintroduction of choice leaving him suddenly and sharply dazed. “I don’t know,” he admitted, looking at Piki for an answer and finding none, Piki clearly as torn between the options as he was.

Proto smirked, coating his hand in extra lube before gripping Pitch’s cock. “Then I get to choose,” he said, guiding Pitch to Piki’s already slicked and stretched entrance. “And I choose to watch.”

 

Pitch had fucked Piki before, and been fucked by him in turn. There had been times when he’d needed it so bad he’d felt like he’d die without it - times when they couldn’t even wait for real privacy, times when they’d had to find a park or a closet or a bathroom and fuck each other’s hands or mouths or thighs.

He’d never felt so in need of it that it scared him before.

Piki straddled Pitch’s thighs awkwardly, the binding around his ankles preventing him from having real freedom of movement, but Proto was there behind him, supporting him. The fact that doing so allowed him to rub his cock between Pitch’s bound hands likely factored into the choice of position more than he would admit.

Under any other circumstances, Pitch would have felt guilty for being unable to take care of Piki’s straining cock, but it was impossible to concentrate when he had Piki bound and helpless and riding him, that the person who’d orchestrated it all, who was still there, still watching them, was their cousin.

Pitch had never felt guilty about his feelings for Piki, still didn’t, but it didn’t take away the thrill of knowing _this_ was wrong - letting Proto join them, letting him watch, that was wrong.

Proto’s eyes were level and calm despite the heat in them as he took his time looking, looking where Pitch’s cock shoved up between Piki’s legs, looking over Piki’s shoulder at the angry red press of Piki’s cock against his stomach, looking at Piki’s wide and gasping mouth.

“Kiss him,” Proto said, and even if it was uncomfortable on his back and his neck to do so, Pitch obeyed; Piki was even more lost than he was, all words gone, all focus gone, and Pitch wanted to go there with him, find Piki in oblivion and bring him home.

Proto’s nails scratched lightly against Pitch’s belly for just a second as he reached around for Piki’s cock, and somehow that one small gesture was enough to drive Pitch over the edge, leaving him fucking Piki until Piki fell back against Proto for balance, leaving him helpless to do anything but moan into Piki’s mouth and wish he could come over and over again, wanting to mark Piki as his, to keep Piki as his own.

Their taped hands kept them bound together even after Pitch finished, Piki’s orgasm a quiet and shattered thing that soaked Pitch’s stomach and Piki’s own, and Proto finishing with an almost cliché grunt over Pitch’s hand not long after Piki was through.

The wet wipes were a good idea, and the scissors even better, Pitch taking advantage of the freedom of his hands to fist them in Piki’s hair - not even to kiss him, just to feel it, to know he could, to know that Piki was there and was his to touch and to love however he wished.

Proto kept his distance, even when Pitch offered him a hand, until Pitch physically grabbed him and pulled him over to join them. Proto was as fucked up as any of them, and he didn’t fit in, and that made him as much theirs as blood ever did.

 

Morning came, as did the side-effects of what little alcohol they had drunk the night before, bad breath and mild headaches combining to make everyone short tempered.

“It stinks of sex in here,” Pitch had grumbled, opening one of the skylights to allow in fresh air.

“These are a creased fucking mess,” Piki grumbled in turn as he gathered up their discarded clothes.

Proto said nothing, a sprawled mess of limbs on the mattress that occasionally turned to remind everyone he was half-asleep rather than half-dead, and after Pitch and Piki finished dressing, they sat down beside him, Piki sliding his sunglasses into place while Pitch picked up one of the clothes pegs that had gone unused the previous night and used it to pinch one of Proto’s nipples.

Proto’s eyes snapped open, a genuine glare appearing before being replaced quickly by that carefully constructed mask of calm, and Pitch pulled the peg back off, rubbed his thumb soothingly over the skin he had abused. “Thank you for last night,” he said, surprised to find he was sincere in saying it. “And any other nights. If that’s okay with you.”

“It’s fine with me,” Piki said, unprompted, but Pitch knew his reasons for doing so. Proto still thought of them as separate.

A little more conversation and a little less duct tape would help him understand his mistake, and even if Pitch still didn’t quite trust him, he felt there was potential beneath the smirk and the mask. Piki certainly saw it.

And Piki had never understood people quite as well as Pitch.


	12. A Question of Taste (Piki/Proto, Nightmare Dork University, Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Piki/Proto, Jack/Piki references  
>  **Rating:** Explicit  
>  **Warning:** Cousin/cousin incest  
>  **Summary:** Pure, inexcusable, shameless facial smut.

Piki loathed dirt. He liked hard lines and starched collars, clean tailoring and the not-quite-smell of linen. He liked black and white, with the occasional concession to colour of jewel shades like ruby red or sapphire blue.

He liked anything he could define neatly, which was part of why he only ever shared his bed with Proto or Jack. Jack was pure and sweet and innocent, someone to touch with reverence, and when he was in Piki’s bed, Piki worshipped him. Proto was a creature of decadence and filth, someone who left bruises and scratches, and when Piki was in Proto’s bed, he felt defiled.

Knowing all the reasons their relationship had to be conducted behind locked doors left Piki feeling perversely safe in Proto’s hands, even when they busied themselves attaching clothes pegs to nipples and underarms and inner thighs, anywhere the skin was just loose enough to pinch up for that particular form of torture. It left him feeling free to participate in Proto’s experiments, testing his own limits when it came to electrical stimulation, exposure to melting wax, or how quickly an enema of diluted wine would get him drunk.

He hated dirt, but he loved Proto’s experiments, and it only seemed fair to celebrate Proto’s birthday by conducting one of his own.

 

Proto was open about his preferences in bed, but never gave any verbal clues as to what his out-and-out weaknesses were. Piki almost would have thought he had none, if he hadn’t learned over time some of the subtleties of Proto’s body language; Proto had admirable control of his muscles, right down to the finer ones at the corners of his lips and his eyes, but with the right stimulus there were moments when his smirk would twitch slightly or the skin under his eyes would tighten. More helpful was how his irises never lied.

Proto undoubtedly enjoyed playing dress-up, enjoyed peeling latex on or off, enjoyed the scratch of lace and slide of satin, but there was a glint in his eyes whenever he slipped a finger into the narrow gap between Piki’s collar and his neck that Piki had come to recognise.

Proto liked formal wear. He liked the thought of desecrating it even more.

 

It took some time for Piki to decide what outfit he was willing to sacrifice for Proto’s birthday, not so much because there were no clothes he wished to part with, but more because he wanted to know they wouldn’t be instantly recognisable as unwanted. Finally he settled on a shirt and pair of pants where the black of them had started to wash grey, a vest that rode a little too high when he sat or knelt, and a tie that looked perfectly acceptable if tucked in but happened to have an embroidered tip that irritated him whenever he looked at it amidst the rest of his collection.

Put together, it looked no different to any of his usual outfits, and Piki almost regretted his plan to let Proto ruin it.

Almost.

 

After a torturous dinner - not so much because of the food, which was surprisingly tolerable given Proto had chosen the restaurant, but because Proto had kept casting knowing smirks Piki’s way and left him squirming in his seat - Piki finally had Proto alone in his flat, shoes kicked off and bedroom door locked.

Proto’s expression was blandly pleasant as usual when Piki started helping him out of his clothes, peeling off a god-awful beige and olive green vest and the blue plaid shirt beneath it, and wondering not for the first time whether Proto actually had some form of clothing blindness that he was hiding behind a hipster facade. “Keen, aren’t we?” Proto asked, and Piki rolled his eyes before unbuckling Proto’s belt and shoving down his slacks, feeling a touch offended when he found Proto limp.

“Someone should be,” Piki replied, taking Proto’s cock in both hands and stroking, knowing that while strictly speaking he only needed the one hand for now it would be easier to work with two soon enough, and feeling the weight of Proto’s gaze turning heavy.

Piki didn’t feel like answering any more questions yet, kept Proto’s lips distracted with a kiss and wondered whether he ought to remove Proto’s scarf as well, opting to leave it be. It felt fitting, somehow, and was a damn sight less distracting than a hat would be.

Or argyle socks, come to think of it. “For god’s sake,” Piki grumbled, glaring down at Proto’s feet before dropping to his knees and peeling them off, discarding them and wiping his hands down on his trousers. It didn’t matter that Proto’s feet were clean, Piki’s hatred of dirt extended to a mild phobia of certain tasks, and the sooner he could return his hands to Proto’s cock, the better.

Proto’s casual expression slipped slightly at the edges as he ran a hand down through Piki’s hair to where it met the collar of his shirt, pupils widening just a fraction, and Piki smirked right back before bracing one hand on Proto’s thigh and leaning forward to lick teasingly at the tip of Proto’s cock.

Proto didn’t say a word, but Piki could see him thinking, see him trying to figure out what exactly Piki was planning, and it was a delight to have the tables turned for once, even if only temporarily.

Piki’s smirk turned into a grin before he took Proto’s cock into his mouth as deep as he could; his gag reflex was too sensitive for him to take quite as much as he’d like, but he could make up for the rest with his hand, pumping and twisting.

He knew what Proto liked, even if he wasn’t certain as to what Proto loved because no amount of experimenting with teeth and tongue and sucking until his jaw ached had drawn anything more than a hiss at best. He knew Proto liked how his cheeks looked when hollowed, and he knew Proto liked having the thickest vein of his cock traced by Piki’s tongue.

He also knew the physical signs Proto was ready to come - the way his thighs and ass tensed up, the way he started holding each inhale a little longer than necessary - and he pulled back, letting Proto’s cock slip from his mouth with a slurp that under normal circumstances would have felt embarrassing. Proto’s studying look had turned into confused arousal, and Piki wished he could keep watching Proto but he wasn’t about to risk getting come in his eye; it was a shame they couldn’t use a camera so he would have an alternative to watching,

Proto’s hands both fisted in his hair, tugging hard, and Piki tensed in anticipation, feeling Proto’s cock twitch and the first hot, wet stripes of semen land across his lips and chin.

It didn’t feel quite as unpleasant as he had predicted, though he was thankful for having chosen clothes he didn’t mind ruining with the come that dripped down from his face and neck, and Proto’s bitten-back mutter of _“Fuck”_ was more of a reaction than Piki had dared hope for.

Piki stroked Proto a few more times once the wet spatters had stopped, milking him just to be sure he was through, before unbuttoning his vest and lifting the hem to wipe his face clean.

He couldn’t entirely resist licking his lips as he opened his eyes and lifted his head to see what the results of his teasing had been, and he smiled at the look on Proto’s face.

“I think I like you like this,” Piki said, and Proto seemed to come back to himself, straightening up.

“The feeling is mutual,” he replied, trying and failing to achieve his usual ambiguous tone.

Piki laughed before looking down at himself, the ruin of his vest and the drips that had landed on his thighs, and took a deep breath before feeling a sudden rush of relief as he remembered they were at his own flat, not Proto’s. Anything else and his carefully planned birthday present would have turned out to be an utter disaster.

He’d entirely forgotten to bring a change of clothes.


	13. About Last Night (Pitch/Pitchiner, Nightmare Dork University, Teen And Up Audiences)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Pitch/Pitchiner  
>  **Rating:** Teen and Up Audiences  
>  **Summary:** In which Pitch is drunk and Pitchiner is a reluctantly wonderful boyfriend.

_Pitchnr are yo awake?_

_Pitciner if you'e awake call me_

_PITCHINER_

_Pichitner wake up_

Pitchiner aimed a blurry-eyed glare at his phone, noting the six missed calls and growing mountain of texts, wondered how much disgrace he would be in if he were to switch it off altogether and pretend in the morning he had run out of battery. If Pitch genuinely needed him, he would have undoubtedly started pestering Proto to give him a wake-up nudge, and as Pitch was currently typing in fluent Vodka, Pitchiner wasn’t entirely sure he was ready for whatever talk Pitch so desperately wished to have.

Pitchiner closed his eyes, sleep still tugging at his limbs, and heard the phone vibrating on his desk yet again, answered the call without really thinking about what he was doing. “Hey.”

“Pitchiner, I’m very, very drunk.”

“I know, babe,” Pitchiner replied, keeping his voice relaxed in a vain hope it would keep the conversation short.

“And I think I’m lossst. Yes. Definitely. I left the bar and walked and there are trees?”

Pitchiner held in a sigh, scratched his head idly. “Mmhm.”

Pitch’s voice lowered to a whisper. “Would you come and get me? I think there are bears.”

Pitchiner snorted out loud, unable to help himself. “Unless you mean leather daddies there are no bears out there, sweetie. You’re in the park. Just look out for the night warden, okay? He’ll get you home.”

“Pitchineeeeeer -”

“Piiiiiitch,” Pitchiner echoed back before thinking better of his urge to keep teasing, and trying for a more reasonable tone. “It’s two a.m. and I’ve got practice in the morning. Why the hell’re you drinking on a Wednesday anyway?”

“Well fuck you,” Pitch snapped, ending the call.

Pitchiner cursed before sitting up and swinging his legs around onto the floor, glaring at his feet as he tried to make himself wake up. He wasn’t sure exactly what sore note he’d hit or how, but while he was willing to let a pleasant-as-he-ever-was drunk Pitch find his own way home, a miserably drunk Pitch was potentially a danger to himself and others.

Pitchiner wondered if he could nominate himself for a Boyfriend Of The Year award, because God knew he deserved it.

 

Pitch wasn’t answering his calls, but Pitchiner hoped he was too drunk to remember how to put the phone on silent, kept an ear out while walking through the park for a hint of Pitch’s ringtone. His legs felt weirdly sore from walking, even if it wasn’t overly far from their flat to the park; being half-asleep made his steps feel heavier than usual, even lumbering, and he wondered if he would feel better or worse if he were a skinny guy.

Ringtones failed him, but his eyes didn’t; Pitch looked like something from a Japanese horror flick, collapsed on one of the park benches with his pale face the only immediately visible thing given he was wearing all black in almost-as-black shadows.

Pitchiner shook him awake, or half-awake at least. “You got your phone with you?”

Pitch glared at him. “Fuck off.”

Pitchiner sighed before checking Pitch’s pockets himself, finding keys, loose change, and a theatre ticket before finally recovering the phone. The fact it was flat made him feel a little guilty, but not so much that he could be bothered with wincing, and he tucked away what had been the contents of Pitch’s pockets in his own jacket so they could be zipped away safely before he scooped Pitch up off the bench.

Fatigue definitely made him weaker; Pitch was normally anything but a struggle to lift.

“Come on,” Pitchiner muttered into Pitch’s hair before slinging him over his shoulder, praying that he wouldn’t get a vomit-coated back in thanks. It seemed to work, though it figured that if there were any alcohol-related deities they’d be on his side instead of against it. “Lets get you home.”

 

Wrangling the bastard into bed was harder than carrying him home had proved to be. Pitch had been happy enough snoozing in Pitchiner’s arms then, but he seemed to be under the mistaken impression that his drunken self was a sex god who Pitchiner should be taking thorough advantage of.

Pitchiner had no qualms about drunk sex provided he was equally drunk, but sobriety took away most of the appeal of sickly-sweet breath and clumsy limbs. At least Pitch’s lack of inhibition made him easier to manipulate in some ways; Pitchiner managed to lure him into brushing his teeth with the promise of further kisses, and persuaded him to drink a cup of water by pretending Pitch looked sexy when swallowing.

It wasn’t a _complete_ lie, because in the right context there was no denying Pitch did, but poorly aiming water at his face and getting half of it in his mouth and the rest on his shirt wasn’t one of those contexts.

Pitch’s drunken sex drive also made him easier to strip, given he seemed to be under the impression that he was stripping for more entertaining reasons than Pitchiner not wanting wet and probably booze-soaked clothes on his mattress.

Overall, getting him ready for bed wasn’t too much of an issue. Getting him into bed without being thoroughly molested in the process was, and Pitchiner was thankful for the small mercy of his own cock obediently refusing to show interest. “Pitch, babe, come on. I’ve got to get up in four hours. Go to sleep.”

“I just want to make you feel good,” Pitch half-slurred, half-whined as Pitchiner cocooned him in a bedsheet to ensure those grope-happy hands were trapped before he slid into bed beside him, wrapping an arm loosely around Pitch’s waist after doing so.

“ _Sleep_ ’ll make me feel good,” Pitchiner grumbled, burying his face in his pillow and willing the night to end.

“Pitchiner. Pitchiner. Pitchiner, I know you’re awake, I need to ask something.”

Pitchiner opened one eyelid just enough to acknowledge he’d heard Pitch, refusing to make any more eye contact than that or to say anything unless he really, _really_ needed to.

“I was thinking. We’re going to get old, aren’t we? I’m going to get wrinkles, and you’re probably going to get fat when your muscles go away. Which is okay, perfectly okay, that’s what old people do.”

Pitchiner knew better than to argue, even if he had a feeling he wasn’t certain he liked where this one-sided conversation was going.

“So. I was thinking. We’re going to get old and fat and wrinkly, and probably miserable. Do you want to be old and miserable with me?”

Pitchiner opened both eyes for that, stared at the completely sincere look on Pitch’s face, and burst into laughter. “Oh my fucking god, did you just propose?”

“No,” Pitch replied, but his upset expression and tone made it fairly clear that even if he hadn’t quite said it outright, a proposal was _implied_.

“You did,” Pitchiner teased, holding Pitch in place when he tried to roll over. “Oh my god, you are going to hate everything when you wake up. That’s the worst proposal I have ever heard. Ever.”

“I hate you,” Pitch hissed, tucking his chin in against his chest when Pitchiner tried to kiss him, and glaring when Pitchiner kissed him on the forehead seeing as the options of mouth and nose had been hidden away.

“You’re such an idiot,” Pitchiner said, biting his lip before letting Pitch go so that he could sulk while Pitchiner resumed burying his head in his pillow, trying to sleep and finally succeeding.

 

Pitch’s mood in the morning was utterly foul. He claimed to have no memory of the previous night, which was far from a surprise, and refused offers of water, orange juice, and coffee in turn. An offer of bacon was also refused, though Pitchiner couldn’t help noticing that the pile of seven strips turned into a pile of five while he dressed for practice.

Pitch seemed infuriated by Pitchiner’s ability to function on four hours of sleep and even more infuriated by his decision to go about dressing and eating breakfast in his bedroom. As far as Pitch was concerned, it was outright indecent of Pitchiner to go about his everyday business in a room Pitch was suffering in.

Admittedly Pitchiner was deliberately adding to that suffering by whistling as he tied laces and fastened buttons, but Pitch’s hangover wasn’t his responsibility and he reserved the right to be obnoxious after having had to literally carry Pitch home.

Pitch refused to meet Pitchiner’s eyes when he bent to give him a goodbye kiss, muttering under his breath about bacon grease and how-dare-something-something. Pitchiner wondered whether Pitch was entirely aware of what he said in moments like this or if he just had a defect where his ire spilt out of him unintentionally from time to time.

“See you later, dear,” Pitchiner said cheerily before gathering up his bags and heading out the door, pausing just a moment to peek back inside and add, “You know, if you ever proposed sober, I would marry the shit out of you.”

Pitchiner liked to start his days with music, and the choked-off squawk Pitch made as he left was a sweeter song than any guitar ballad could be.


	14. January Drive (Jack/Piki, Nightmare Dork University, Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Jack/Piki  
>  **Rating:** Explicit  
>  **Summary:** A hard earned happy ending, a good long time after Jack and Piki have reunited.

It wasn’t easy for Piki to support Jack’s weight while they made their way back to the changing room. Jack could see that in the way Piki clenched his jaw, the way Piki’s skin was reddened by strain, but he didn’t feel guilt for being a burden. Not this time. Jack was sore and aching and prouder of himself than he could ever remember being before.

He hadn’t swum far or well before a cramp had crippled his leg and left him panicking, choking on water as he forgot how to breathe. Piki had been forced to keep him upright until a lifeguard spotted his struggle and helped him out of the water, and Piki had taken responsibility for helping Jack limp away from the pool side.

Trying to swim had been a disaster, but it didn’t matter for the simple fact that he _had_ swum. He didn’t plan on doing so ever again, but by going swimming he’d exorcised one of the few personal demons he could physically destroy.

When Piki deposited him on the bench of a disabled cubicle to wrap him in a towel and fuss over him, Jack couldn’t help but grin.

 

Piki didn’t say anything at first as he helped Jack dry and dress himself, but his eyes did, as did the way he was rough with the towel when rubbing down Jack’s arms and shoulders. _You scared me to death._

Once upon a time Piki would have told Jack so, hinting that Jack shouldn’t do such things, that he should do whatever Piki thought best for him. Once upon a time, Jack would have listened.

Jack cupped a hand around the back of Piki’s neck, wet strands of hair clinging to his fingers, and pulled him in for a kiss. Jack wanted to thank Piki for keeping quiet; they were both working hard at fixing what they had, and moments of positive reinforcement felt so much better than moments they spent pulling away from each other or arguing.

Piki dropped the towel, hands coming to rest on Jack’s waist, and Jack broke away from the kiss with a quiet gasp; trapped moisture from Piki’s hands made the contact feel too hot and too intimate, and he needed to pull back from that before the lack of barriers between their skin became too much of a temptation.

"I did it,” Jack said, feeling shaky and proud and more than a little aroused. “I’m n-never swimming a-g-gain, but I did it!”

For a moment Piki looked at him as if he’d grown a second head, a look Jack had become all too familiar with when they first reunited, but the moment passed and Piki nodded before hugging Jack tight.

It still hurt to breathe, Jack’s nose still recovering from the water he’d inhaled while panicking, but he didn’t mind quite as much as he could have done. Piki knew why Jack had wanted to go swimming, had hated the idea of Jack deliberately putting himself in a position where he would be afraid, but he had supported Jack’s decision. Jack felt like he’d just tested the foundations of their new relationship and found them solid, and when he hugged Piki back, it was hard to imagine ever letting go.

 

It was probably cruel to have Piki stay to help him dress. It was definitely cruel to have Piki help soothe his cramp before dressing, taking advantage of nimble fingers as they massaged his sore leg from ankle to thigh, though he avoided eye contact throughout to stop his cruelty from turning into sadism.

By some miracle they made it back to Piki’s flat, or at least to his car park, before Jack gave up trying to be patient and climbed into Piki’s lap. He’d never been happier for the invention of tinted windows as he settled in place, feeling hungry as he took Piki’s head in both hands and kissed him. The adrenaline of conquering one of his greatest fears demanded release, and Jack couldn’t think of any good reason not to take out that adrenaline on Piki’s mouth.

Jack had always liked kissing Piki, liked feeling the harsh line of his lips soften under the press of Jack’s own, liked how the skin just beneath his nose would redden if Jack kissed him hard enough. The last few weeks had been better still for Jack learning how it felt to give kisses instead of just taking them, how Piki almost always seemed surprised, how he would tense up before relaxing into a kiss and make the loveliest sounds if caught off-guard.

Jack moved one hand away from Piki’s head to adjust the seat into tipping back so they had more room to manoeuvre in and less need to worry about Piki’s feet accidentally knocking any of the car pedals, and Jack would have kissed Piki again immediately afterwards had he not looked so lost for a second that it forced Jack to pause.

Jack’s time away from Piki had stopped him feeling like he was part of Piki - had stopped him feeling like they were a single, inseparable entity - and it had made it easier on his return to notice certain signs he hadn’t noticed before.

Like how often Piki didn’t believe Jack was really there. That Jack wanted him, and him specifically. That Jack hadn’t come back with the intention of running away again.

Jack pressed the lightest of kisses to Piki’s lips before tangling both hands in Piki’s hair, rubbing his fingers against Piki’s scalp.

“Piki,” Jack began, not quite sure what he wanted to say or how best to say it. “I - I want this. I want you to fuck me.” He kissed Piki again, still light, still bordering on chaste. “Just you. Only you.”

Piki let out a shuddering breath beneath him, and Jack lowered both hands to unbuckle and set aside his belt before unzipping and wriggling his slacks down, giggling to himself when he accidentally banged his head against the roof of the car in the process.

Piki’s moment of self-consciousness had dampened Jack’s immediate need for satisfaction, made it easier to remember little things that had to be done - taking off Piki’s sunglasses and setting them on the car’s dashboard, checking the doors were locked, digging out unscented hand cream from the glove box. It made it easier to remember that Piki needed to be told, needed to be shown how much Jack wanted him.

Jack knew they had to look a little ridiculous, Piki reclining beneath him fully clothed while he straddled Piki’s lap with his sweater on and his pants around his ankles, but it didn’t feel ridiculous. Not when Piki started groping him between kisses, rubbing hand cream over Jack’s thighs and ass and cock until every exposed inch of skin felt slick and over-sensitive, and it was getting harder to breathe between kisses, harder to do more than rest his lips against Piki’s between gasps and requests for Piki to keep going.

Piki’s fingers started to push deeper, nudging their way inside Jack instead of just grazing across his entrance, and Jack rocked carefully against them, urging Piki to push deeper still. He wanted more, wanted it faster, and reached down to unbuckle and unzip Piki’s trousers, opening the fly of Piki’s boxers and freeing his cock, unsurprised to find precome already beading at the tip.

“Please, Piki,” Jack groaned, desperate and unashamed of his desperation, though he couldn’t help but blush fiercely when Piki replied,

“Whatever you want.”

Piki withdrew his fingers and set the hand cream aside, slicking his cock quickly before guiding it to Jack’s entrance and holding it there, nodding for Jack to go ahead.

It was always easier to relax if he closed his eyes, but Jack wanted to see Piki’s reaction, wanted to know how Piki looked when Jack fucked himself open on his cock, and Jack’s gasp as he took Piki in as deep as he could wasn’t entirely due to physical sensation.

The position limited how far he could take Piki, but it was satisfying enough to feel his ass meet the cold metal of Piki’s open zip, to watch Piki’s eyes squeeze shut and his jaw go slack.

After the first few awkward, shallow thrusts, Jack felt secure enough to lean forward and wrap his arms around Piki’s shoulders, clinging to him tight and pressing kisses to his neck and ear and jawline as he rode him, loving the slide of Piki inside him, the heat and the knowing it _was_ Piki. “You’re addictive,” Jack gasped, wishing he’d stripped further because while he’d counted on staying mostly dressed to keep him from feeling overstimulated, in practise he felt too hot, like he was going to burn up in Piki’s arms. Piki’s hips rolled against his at a slow and steady pace, but Jack felt frantic, needy and ready to come.

It used to take so damned long for him to get close, fear of arousal and hatred of his body making it a nightmare to work himself up, and he still wasn’t used to pacing himself; it didn’t help that Piki had more control now than he had during the first run of their relationship, that he could hold back thanks to practice while Jack couldn’t because he’d never needed to before.

Jack knew it was cheating to break through Piki’s carefully acquired self-control by distracting him, but he didn’t feel as if he had any other choice - even with his cock untouched, he felt like he was on the verge of bursting.

Jack pressed his lips up against Piki’s ear, braced himself before whispering, “I want you to come in me.” Jack gripped his own cock tight, started stroking himself to relieve the pressure as he continued whispering, “It’s okay, I - I know you want to, I want it. Come in me.”

“What, Jack, what are you -” Piki gasped, hips stuttering against Jack’s.

Jack pulled back enough to meet Piki’s eyes, felt himself flushing fiercely at the thought of what he’d just said, the words only feeling real when he could see who he’d been saying them to. “Did - did you want me to stop?”

Piki shook his head, both hands coming to rest on Jack’s ass and pull him into each thrust. “Please don’t.”

Jack’s blush intensified, but he nodded, continuing to stroke his cock as he rode Piki’s, the motion of his hips turning hard and shallow. “I - I want it, I want to feel you come. I love how it feels, love feeling it inside me, knowing it’s yours, knowing I f-feel -”

Even if the intent had been to make Piki come first, the pressure of talking to Piki while being fucked by him was too much, had Jack keening as he spilled over his hand and their clothes, thighs trembling with exertion even with Piki’s hands steadying him.

Piki didn’t last much longer before his fingers tightened their grip on Jack’s ass and he grunted against Jack’s shoulder, Jack unable to resist a soft moan in turn when he felt Piki come. He hadn’t been lying or even exaggerating when he’d told Piki he loved that feeling - much as he could live without the mess, he loved the wet pulse of heat and knowing he was responsible for it.

 

Jack had never been particularly fond of moving after sex, and was even less fond of moving after sex and swimming, his legs feeling as if they were made of lead whenever he shifted.

Piki seemed content enough just holding Jack anyway.

“That was -” Piki began, sliding his hands up Jack’s hips and under his sweater to grip his waist. “Incredible.”

Jack couldn’t help but smile, catching Piki’s chin with his clean hand and tilting it up for a kiss, unable to imagine anyone else who would say something like that without a hint of irony.

It felt like the world had gone still and quiet around them, and when Jack finally clambered out of Piki’s lap into the passenger seat so he could pull his slacks back on, it felt right to see that it had started to snow. Heavily, too.

Jack let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, wondered why he felt forgiven.

“We should head inside,” Jack said, almost to himself. “If - if it’s snowing, all the kids will be out soon. And the drunks.”

Piki unlocked the doors and climbed out, half-jogging around the car to Jack’s side before helping him stand, and Jack marvelled at how he’d somehow managed to re-acquire his sunglasses and straighten his outfit as though nothing had happened between them. Come stains aside, of course.

Jack had wondered why the stillness felt heavy, shivered as snow grazed the back of his neck, and squeezed Piki’s hand tight as he realised where the weight in his stomach came from. In years before, thinking about it would have knocked him dizzy.

Piki tilted his head, asked, “What’s wrong?”

Jack smiled even as he teared up and wiped at his eyes. “Nothing’s wrong,” he replied, honest and beyond relieved by the fact he _was_ being honest. “It’s Emma’s birthday today. And I forgot.”

“I’m sorry,” Piki said, quiet and with too much sincerity for Jack’s liking.

“I forgot because I was with you. That’s not a bad thing,” Jack explained before wrapping both arms around Piki’s waist, holding him close and pressing his face into Piki’s chest, the warmth of him almost burning in amidst so much cold. “I didn’t know I could.”

Piki’s arms settled around Jack’s shoulders, and Jack knew if they didn’t move now, they would end up staying outside until they either froze to death or were caught in stained clothing by someone who knew what those stains meant.

It would have been harder to move if Jack didn’t know how near they were to warmth and safety and a bed they could share, and Jack tilted his head up, nuzzled Piki’s throat with his nose. “Piki, take me home.”

And Piki did.


	15. Untitled Jack/Piki Future Fic Fluff (Jack/Piki, Nightmare Dork University, General Audiences)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Jack/Piki  
>  **Rating:** General Audiences  
>  **Summary:** A quick look into why Piki fell for Jack, and why Jack fell right back.

Piki had spent hours, days, months since he had met Jack trying to figure out the secret of what made him addictive. He had poured all his efforts as a poet into describing every inch of Jack that he knew, every quirk, every habit, how he looked and sounded and smelled, even how he felt.

Piki liked being able to capture a thing in words. If he could describe a figure without ever naming it, he knew his understanding of it was complete.

Jack’s addictive quality remained elusive, and as hard as Piki tried to chase it down, it always seemed to stay ahead of him, taunting him from a distance.

 

It wasn’t until years later he found its source. After they had fallen apart and pulled themselves back together, after Jack learned to talk and Piki learned to listen, and they spent night after night rediscovering each other, finding details they had missed and details they had never forgotten.

He found it in the silence after they finished eating dinner, or lost interest in whatever was on television. He found it the same way he’d first found it when watching Jack on an empty stage, gathering up equipment that needed putting away - the first time his interest in Jack registered as something more than physical.

Jack made the world feel still.

Piki had never known how _not_ to think, his distractions and hobbies as taxing as his work, sometimes more so. Drinking made him think a little slower, orgasm brought his thoughts to a temporary screeching halt, and neither provided an effective long-term solution.

Jack wasn’t the calm before a storm. He wasn’t rain or hail or sleet. He was snow, silent and soft, and bright in a way that couldn’t be ignored but never, ever jarred.

 

Piki stopped trying to capture Jack’s addictive quality in poetry as soon as he knew what it was, because he didn’t want to share it with the rest of the world. This part of Jack was his to understand, not theirs.

And grateful as he was for understanding it, he had to wonder what Jack saw in him when Jack’s beauty was a universal constant, something that could hypnotise anyone he saw fit to like or love.

The question slipped out with barely a thought while tracing a finger around Jack’s lips and down his neck late one night. “Why would you choose me?”

Jack was quiet long enough for Piki to regret asking, but his eyes weren’t sad or cruel, just thoughtful, and he took Piki’s hand with his own, pressed gentle kisses to each fingertip in turn. “I didn’t choose you. I fell in love with you. Choice had n-nothing to do with it.”

Piki accepted the answer for what it was at the time, but perhaps he should have known Jack’s discovery of how to speak up didn’t automatically translate into an ability to adequately explain all his feelings.

It took finding an attempt at poetry of Jack’s own to see something more.

 

 ~~You~~ ~~He~~ You were easy to find  
And impossible to understand  
 ~~A black hole~~  
I fell into you like gravity  
And I know now  
I brought my own weight with me  
It took you  
To see I could be weightless  
And I realised ~~you weren’t empty black a nightmare at all~~  
You were the night  
And you  
Gave me  
The stars


	16. Indelible Ink (Pitch/Pitreneur, Dorks of the Opera, General Audiences)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Dorks of the Opera (a Nightmare Dork University/Phantom of the Opera fusion)  
>  **Pairing:** Pitch/Pitreneur (Pitchiner by any other name)  
>  **Rating:** General Audiences  
>  **Warning:** Canon typical ableism  
>  **Summary:** Pitch wants to leave a mark on the world, and fears he's running out of time to do so.

Pitch loathes the change of seasons. Not only does it wreak havoc on his skin and cause his cuticles to flake and crack painfully, it acts as a reminder that he is aging. Pitch has always taken care to avoid celebrating his birthday due to it drawing his thoughts to the one he shares his birthday with, but the change of seasons is one that affects him uniquely.

Pitch has hidden behind his beauty for years, using his charm, grace, and quick wit to gain the favour of others. He is the stereotype of a diva, a flamboyant actor, and as long as he lives up to that stereotype he may live as he pleases and indulge in whatever activities he sees fit. Years slowly add shadows under his eyes that demand to be caked in make-up, add thin lines around his mouth and across his brow, and Pitch knows a time will come when he can no longer play up to the stereotype. Autumn is claiming the world outside his bedroom window, and he knows one day it will come for him too.

It is a thought that honestly frightens him. He has never married, never fathered a child legitimately or otherwise, and has no other heir to whom his fortune might go. It isn’t something he draws attention to, but he knows as time passes the gossip he enjoys sharing with others will focus on him more and more.

He’s seen what Piki has become after years of isolation and doesn’t wish to become a similarly twisted neurotic mess, anymore than he wishes to die alone.

 

When it was first decided to tell the world Piki had died, Pitch played into his parents’ hands better than they expected. He continued playing the part they had assigned to him, the artistic savant, a painter and poet and singer and actor, fitting the role with ease. As to their instructions regarding Piki, they had been the simplest of all - “Don’t talk about your brother. Pretend he’s dead.” - and they had left an indelible mark.

Pitch was living in a world where it didn’t matter what Piki had been, what he had achieved before they declared him dead. What mattered was that he had been a disfigured embarrassment to his, _their_ , parents - one not even worthy of discussion.

There were no whispered stories about Piki. There were no stories at all.

In a way, Pitch supposes he’s both relieved by and jealous of Piki’s reputation as the Phantom. People would not tell stories for one of his names, so he made another to pass down, one that spread whisper by whisper until it covered near all of Paris.

Pitch is a footnote in those stories, and while he sings with all his strength, all the power he can muster, his audience seems more concerned about documenting his failures than his successes. They aren’t interested in the attainment of perfection, just in gathering to watch Icarus falling over and over again, regardless of who plays the part.

 

Pitch’s bedroom door opens with a loud bang before shutting with greater care, and Pitch doesn’t need to turn to know who is visiting. A rustle of leaves and petals confirms that knowledge, and when Pitreneur walks up to him and slips his arms around Pitch’s waist, he shamelessly leans back into the touch for comfort. “You seem pensive, mon chéri.”

“I’ve been known to think, on occasion,” Pitch says, sniping without any real feeling before closing his hands over Pitreneur’s. “I hope you aren’t disappointed.”

“Far from it,” Pitreneur replies, leaning in to brush his lips over Pitch’s neck, “I find brains shine a light on beauty.”

Pitch bites his lip when Pitreneur’s teeth nip at his ear, before he steps away from the bedroom window and raises an eyebrow at the bouquet of white roses on his dresser. It isn’t like Pitreneur to choose something so ordinary, and unlike anyone to give him a gift that traditionally symbolises purity.

“I wouldn’t expect you to come here uninspired.”

Pitreneur sighs before picking one of the roses out from the bouquet and pressing it to Pitch’s lips, dragging it down his chin until the cool, smooth texture of the petals catches at Pitch’s collar. “There is a story behind these, and if you would be so kind as to behave yourself, I’ll tell it to you.”

Pitch bristles at first, but it’s been a terribly lonely night and he could stand a little company.

 

It takes a few minutes after their collapsing together in a pile of bruised petals for Pitch to gather himself enough to ask Pitreneur what the promised story was about, and Pitreneur’s smile in response is lazy and content.

For a moment Pitch thinks the promise was a trick, until Pitreneur raises himself on one elbow and grabs a fistful of petals, letting them rain down over Pitch’s chest. “You remember our first meeting well enough, but I remember the first time I saw you. You were sat by yourself with a bottle of red wine at a table decorated with white roses, pretending to be scandalised by gossip.” Pitreneur’s hand moves up, pressing his index finger where Pitch likes to wear a beauty mark beside his eye. “You tried so hard to fit in despite being the only point of interest in the room.”

Pitch normally lets himself melt into the poetic tales Pitreneur spins for him, but on this occasion he can’t help feeling a disappointed ache. “You’ve said before it was my singing that caught your attention. And it doesn’t explain why you brought roses.”

Pitreneur grins as though he’s won a game, and Pitch considers shoving him away before Pitreneur saves him from having to, getting up to gather the remainder of the bouquet and bringing it over. “Oh ye of little faith,” Pitreneur says, and Pitch’s heart races when he notices a shine on the flowers that would not be there in nature.

They’re all preserved in wax.

“I would crush twelve and twelve more roses on your skin if you liked, but it seemed more fitting to use one fresh and give you a story with the others. And is it not possible I heard you before I first saw you?”

Pitch grits his teeth before fisting both hands in Pitreneur’s hair and pulling him into a kiss fierce enough that he feels Pitreneur’s bottom lip split and bleed. It doesn’t matter - he and Pitreneur have shared more than blood already, and right now he wants everything Pitreneur has to offer, everything Pitreneur could ever give.

It feels small and petty to say anything, and he fears his voice will give away more than intended, but the need to speak has him interrupting their kiss to say, “Thank you.”

It feels just as small and petty to say it as he predicted, but it needed saying nonetheless - it’s one of the only times in recent years he’s meant it, and he couldn’t waste that opportunity.

“Anything for my diva,” Pitreneur replies teasingly, and Pitch flinches before shaking his head, kissing Pitreneur gently where his lip is split, and saying,

“Call me Pitch.”

 

It takes more effort than Pitch would care to admit to resist asking Pitreneur to stay, but the presence of the roses helps.

Pitch knows his beauty is fleeting, but as he looks at the flowers, he can’t help but think of the portraits and sketches artists have begged him to pose for over the years; he’s had the chance to be preserved by means other than words.

If some part of him is worth holding onto, even if it’s something he himself knows to be meaningless, perhaps he has more to offer the world than another pathetically aging actor.

Perhaps he still has time to make his mark, even if he has to do it without his voice.

 

The End


	17. Breaking Out the Winter Clothes (Jack/Piki, Nightmare Dork University, Teen and Up Audiences)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University   
> **Pairing:** Jack/Piki  
>  **Rating:** Teen and Up Audiences  
>  **Summary:** Jack loves the cold.

When the weather is at its coldest, too cold for anyone to go outside unless they absolutely have to, Jack can’t help but feel oddly comforted. There’s something safe about having everyone inside and close by, and he feels less out of place when the others layer up for warmth. Once everyone else has resorted to wearing sweaters and layers, he doesn’t feel quite so much as if he’s hiding in his own clothes around them.

Piki keeps his outfits monochrome and close-fitting while Pitch refuses to wear anything remotely fluffy, but Proto and Pitchiner both take full advantage of the weather, Proto opting for bizarre colour and pattern combinations in his usual manner and occasionally breaking every rule known to man by wearing multiple scarves at the same time, while Pitchiner dips into his own collection of festive knitwear from his family.

Pitchiner wears cherubs and Rudolph and Santa with as much pride as he wears team jackets, and Jack can’t help giggling on occasion at some of the more extreme Christmas-wear, usually gets a laugh in response and occasionally a ruffling of his hair.

Winter clothing also brings an additional benefit for Jack, in that it makes everyone feel both safer and more comfortable to lean on. The bulk of the layers lets him lean on Piki without worrying about hurting him or being hurt by his sharp angles, makes up for one of the disadvantages of Piki’s lean physique, and with everyone else it allows Jack to cuddle up a little closer to them without the risk of bare skin brushing against bare skin.

Jack isn’t used to casual intimacy and doubts he ever will be, but it’s easier to practise friendly gestures when he isn’t afraid of overstepping the mark by accident.

There is one final benefit to the layers, one for behind closed doors and one that leaves him flustered without tipping him over into anxiety. Each layer Piki wears is one that Jack gets to watch him peel off.

Piki still comes before he does most of the time, but Jack is never quite as far behind him when it’s midwinter.


	18. Baking Goodies (Jack & Proto, Nightmare Dork University, General Audiences)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Characters:** Jack and Proto  
>  **Rating:** General Audiences  
>  **Summary:** Jack bakes cookies, and Proto is surprised by getting to appreciate them.

Proto is never particularly surprised to find the door unlocked on getting home. Jack never locks the door behind himself - seems to think it would be rude to lock the door to a home that isn’t his own - and as Piki is in the final stages of drafting his latest play, the last week has seen Jack’s visits become a regular thing.

The kitchen smells like heaven, cookies sitting out on the counter as an explanation for the sugar and spice scent in the air, and Proto sighs before putting away his own groceries, wishing he’d thought to buy something sweet. Adding sugar to his chai tea helps satisfy the craving for sweetness, but it doesn’t take away the frustration of being unable to just snatch up a cookie and enjoy it.

Jack is curled up on the sofa, fast asleep, and Proto can’t resist startling him by running a finger across the back of his ear. Jack is getting harder to surprise, but he still reacts in entertaining ways to having his sleep disrupted.

It also serves a practical purpose. Having Jack sit up means he can join him on the sofa, and take advantage of the better lighting to read. Pitchiner and Pitch have a tendency to claim the sofa for themselves before wasting the lighting to watch a movie, and trying to claim it back isn’t worth the effort. Jack is more civilised that way. He reacts to fear like a sensible person should.

Once he’s awake enough to make coherent sounds, Jack asks, “A-are the cookies alright?”

Proto doesn’t bother to look up from his book. “I wouldn’t know. You know I don’t eat eggs.”

Jack’s eyes widen before he takes an almost comically loud inhale and says, “I-it’s, it’s okay! I l-looked up substitutes, y-you can eat them.”

Proto blinks, and does look over at Jack this time. “No dairy?”

Jack shakes his head. “I used margarine. Margarine’s okay, i-isn’t it?”

Proto nods, and Jack smiles a little before hopping off the sofa and running to the kitchen, coming back with two of the cookies before he freezes for a moment, Proto’s heart sinking at Jack’s hesitation.

“You’re not allergic to bananas?”

Proto shakes his head, and Jack smiles again before passing him a cookie and sitting down with his own, staring at Proto.

It takes Proto a moment to realise that Jack is waiting for him to give his opinion on the cookie, and he sniffs it before taking a bite, making sure that he can’t taste honey or anything else suspect, but there isn’t a hint of dairy or honey, only sugar and spice and banana. It’s a little burnt at the edges and a little soft in the middle, cooked too quickly on too high a heat, but he can’t fault the taste.

Jack keeps staring, and Proto stares back, unsettled. Jack doesn’t have anything to gain from this that he can think of, and he doesn’t know how to react to that. “Thank you,” Proto says.

Jack blushes before curling up with his own cookie, muttering a quick, “You’re welcome,” in return.

 

By the time Proto finishes the book, Jack is asleep again. If Proto tugs him over gently so Jack can rest his head on Proto’s thigh instead of sleeping sitting up, it isn’t as if there’s anyone around who would mind.

If there was, Proto would probably laugh anyway.


	19. Proving a Point (Pitch/Pitchiner, Nightmare Dork University, Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Pitch/Pitchiner  
>  **Rating:** Explicit  
>  **Summary:** Dirty talk and bondage, all in a (birth)day's work for Pitch and Pitchiner.

Pitch was being a spoilsport. He knew the rules of their birthday game, and Pitchiner had played by those rules in turn, even when it meant spending Pitch’s last birthday on his hands and knees pretty much from dawn to dusk. Pitchiner had at least waited until evening before asking for his present.

Granted, the rope they were using was a gift from Proto and that would normally be valid cause for alarm, but the fabric was soft and breathable. Even the book that came with it had clear enough diagrams to be of use despite all the text being in Japanese.

Pitchiner had been careful in following the instructions, worked in Pitch’s request that no rope go around his neck and kept the main knot points around Pitch’s shoulders, back, and chest instead. Twenty minutes spent winding black rope around Pitch’s naked white skin were twenty minutes well spent as far as Pitchiner was concerned, so the fact Pitch looked bored was something of a downer.

“Don’t remember pissing in your cheerios,” Pitchiner said, testing the knots on Pitch’s back once more before trusting them to hold Pitch’s arms in place when he finished tightening the loops around Pitch’s wrists. He’d worried the rope would be far too long for an elegant finish, but there wasn’t much left over and for a first effort he felt he’d done a decent job.

“I didn’t say anything,” Pitch replied in a tone that said everything his words hadn’t.

“You’re sulking. If you hate it that much -”

“I’m not sulking,” Pitch said, rolling his eyes, “I just don’t see the point. I didn’t see the point with handcuffs and I don’t see the point with rope.”

Pitchiner finished the last knot, nodded to himself before standing up and dragging Pitch with him, laughing when Pitch stumbled despite having both legs free.

Pitch’s eyes widened when he looked in the mirror. “Oh.”

“‘Oh’ is right,” Pitchiner said, grinding his hips against Pitch’s as they both admired the reflection of his handiwork. “The point is it looks fucking hot.”

Pitch’s interest had clearly been caught, and Pitchiner couldn’t resist encouraging him, meeting Pitch’s eyes in the mirror as he nipped at Pitch’s ear and palmed his chest, enjoying the contrast between the rope and Pitch’s skin.

He wondered how much of the lure of marring Pitch’s skin lay in how flawless it was pre-bruising, bent over to grab his phone from the dressing table and snap a picture of the ropework.

“Delete that,” Pitch said, arms straining instinctively when he tried to reach for the phone, and a delightful terror crossing his face once he realised he couldn’t.

“Say please,” Pitchiner replied, enjoying the moment of panic.

“I’m not kidding,” Pitch said, eyes darkening, and Pitchiner licked his lips in thought; he knew that look well, it was the look that meant he was one wrong word away from Pitch adding the moment to his internal list of Pitchiner fuck-ups to call on in the event of a fight, but it was so much fun riling him up.

Pitchiner sighed and hooked an arm around Pitch’s shoulders, used the other to show the photo and prove he was deleting it.

Pitch raised an eyebrow on seeing the previous picture was a photo of him bending over in very tight pants during class. “Really?”

“Can’t blame a guy for looking,” Pitchiner said, dropping his hand from Pitch’s shoulder to his ass and squeezing tight. “'specially if he gets to do more than look.”

Pitch rolled his eyes, but there was a hint of a smirk there nonetheless and his cock had started to harden, drawing Pitchiner’s attention fully back to the situation at hand.

“Bedtime,” Pitchiner teased, scooping Pitch up and loving every second of indignant protest.

 

Pitchiner liked his body. He’d worked hard to tone the muscles a naturally strong build had given him, and the ability to manhandle others with ease was one of the many perks of that strength.

Having complete control over how he fucked Pitch was more than just a perk. He loved the harsh exhale Pitch let out as he pushed in, loved how Pitch felt, bony hips in his hands and hot, tight heat around his cock. He loved that Pitch could handle rough treatment, and he loved more the visible and often vocal frustration when Pitchiner took things slow, the way Pitch would try and find room to manoeuvre but couldn’t escape the cage of Pitchiner’s hands.

Tied up like the best sort of Christmas present, the effect was only amplified, made Pitchiner glad he hadn’t used Pitch’s mouth first because otherwise he wouldn’t have lasted more than a minute.

“Aren’t you gonna tell me what you want?” Pitchiner asked, grinning up at Pitch as he indulged in a moment of laziness, lying back and letting Pitch ride him.

“Shut up,” Pitch snarled, and Pitchiner slapped his ass hard in response.

“Behave, dear, birthday rules still apply.”

Pitch was furious, skin flushed red with anger and arousal, but he didn’t say stop. He didn’t like talking in bed, but not to a point where he’d exercise his right to say no.

Pitchiner knew he was taking advantage of his birthday to get revenge for all the times Pitch had insisted he shut up, and he didn’t care.

“Ugh - fine. I want you to fuck me.”

Pitchiner raised an eyebrow, looked down at where Pitch’s thighs straddled him, rocking forward with each thrust of his cock. “I think we’ve got that covered -”

“No, I want you to _fuck me_. I hate it slow, you _know_ I hate it slow, and this slow and steady nonsense is bullshit.”

“Is it now?” Pitchiner asked, smirking as he slid his hands further up to Pitch’s waist, allowing him more freedom to move. “Keep going.”

“You’re such a pervert,” Pitch said, closing his eyes as he pushed back faster, harder.

“I know.”

“I hate feeling everything, oversensitive, hate -” he paused, let out a frustrated grunt, “Hate fucking - feeling hungry…”

He trailed off, and Pitchiner sat up, lifting Pitch with him and clutching his waist tight enough to bruise, mouthing up and down the sensitive stretch of his neck. “Keep going babe, you’re killing me.”

Pitch hissed, arms straining again, and Pitchiner knew full well this would normally be the time he’d earn a scratched up back for his efforts. “I hate - I hate needing this, hate how good it feels, hate loving your fucking cock -”

Pitchiner growled before claiming Pitch’s mouth with his own, unafraid of being bitten, wanting to devour Pitch, to own him entirely.

They were both breathless by the time he’d finished thoroughly fucking Pitch’s mouth with his tongue.

“Come on me,” Pitchiner ordered, holding Pitch closer to feel the friction of Pitch’s cock against his stomach.

“I’ll need help,” Pitch said, shuddering, and Pitchiner nodded, set one hand on Pitch’s back to support him while he wrapped the other around Pitch’s cock and stroked hard.

“Come on baby, come on,” Pitchiner urged, wanting Pitch to finish first and increasingly sure he wasn’t going to, because Pitch felt too damned good and looked even better, flushed and bound, face tense and eyes half-lidded, “Come on you perfect whore, I fucking love you, come on -”

Pitch’s head slammed forward, cracking Pitchiner on the chin, and the explosion of pain wasn’t enough to ruin the feeling of Pitch clamping down around him, voice a choked-off scream against his chest, come painting wet stripes over Pitchiner’s hand and both their stomachs.

Pitchiner returned both hands to Pitch’s hips, not bothering to wipe off Pitch’s come first, sucked and bit marks into Pitch’s throat he’d have to hide with a scarf later and groaned at the thought of that image.

Pitch’s orgasm had left him relaxed and pliant, and it was a gift just to be able to make the last few thrusts long and slow and deep, Pitch unable to word any complaints he had about the pace, and the tension in his shoulders when Pitchiner drove in hard and came made biting down on his collarbone all the more satisfying.

 

Pitch collapsed gracelessly against the bed after Pitchiner pulled out and let him go, cursed Pitchiner out for dropping him, though he quietened once Pitchiner started loosening and untying the knots around his arms.

Normally Pitchiner would have had something smart-ass to say, but he was pretty sure that despite all intentions to do the reverse, Pitch had fucked _him_ senseless, and any attempt to speak might end in actual praise.

Once he’d finished unwrapping Pitch, the red lines spread across Pitch’s skin demanded to be licked, Pitch only making one half-hearted sound of complaint before lying back and letting Pitchiner have his fill. Pitchiner considered it reasonable compensation for the fact he wasn’t allowed to take any photos of his handiwork.

He didn’t get quite as far through mapping the lines with his tongue as he would have liked before the warmth of Pitch’s skin became more alluring than anything else about him, and he rested his head on Pitch’s stomach, ignoring the still-tacky mess on it as he shut his eyes.

“No. No, you’re not falling asleep on me,” Pitch snarled, shoving at Pitchiner’s head and twisting to try and get out from under him.

“Birthday rules, dear,” Pitchiner said.

“Tomorrow won’t be your birthday, get off -”

“Then wake me at midnight.”

Pitch shoved one last time before giving up, settling down and his breathing settling with him. “I will. I mean it.”

“Sure thing, sweetie.”

 

Pitch meant it, but a post-coital nap before a shower and bed was never a bad thing.


	20. Positive Feedback (Pitch/Pitchiner, Nightmare Dork University, Mature)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Pitch/Pitchiner  
>  **Rating:** Mature  
>  **Summary:** A femslash AU of NDU, written for marypsue.

Pitch knew what communal life meant. Dishes piling up in the sink, food going missing, terrible wake-up calls at inhuman hours. Living in a women-only dorm meant fewer instances of grotesque filth - she’d heard about the rotten lasagne incident a few flats down and it was no secret the south-eastern halls had recently been fumigated - but it didn’t have much of an effect on the noise levels, or the complete lack of respect for privacy.

Pitch didn’t live with frat boys, but Pitchiner did a good impression of one, smacking Pitch in the face with a newspaper before sitting down hard enough for the bed to creak in protest. “Rise and shine, sleeping beauty.”

Pitch cracked open one eye, her irritation only growing when the newspaper blocked her from glaring effectively. “Fuck. Off.”

“Not until you read the paper. Page twenty-three.”

Pitch huffed before picking up the offending article and flicking through the pages, grimacing with discomfort when she saw what had caught Pitchiner’s interest. “I don’t read reviews,” Pitch said, tossing the paper aside as casually as she could before pulling the duvet over her head.

Pitchiner didn’t take the hint the way it was intended, crawling under the covers and spooning around Pitch, fully clothed save for her feet. The trapped heat was more comforting than expected thanks to colder weather having finally set in. “Who gives a shit about the review? You got four stars!”

“And?”

Pitchiner rolled her eyes. “Four stars? That’s badass. I’ve never seen them give more than two. They hate everything!” Pitchiner’s lips were deceptively soft when she kissed the shaved side of Pitch’s head, her true colours showing when she followed it up by biting Pitch’s ear and sliding a hand under her nightdress. “Feel like celebrating?” Pitchiner asked, gently squeezing Pitch’s thigh even if she seemed more preoccupied with licking and nibbling Pitch’s ear, exploiting her weakness.

“Does celebrating mean fifteen hours of drinking before being escorted home by the police?”

“That was one time,” Pitchiner huffed, though apparently she wasn’t offended enough to lose interest in her attack.

“One time is enough!” Pitch snapped back, rolling over to glare at her. “I’m not drinking.”

“Fine, fuck it. Suit yourself,” Pitchiner said, letting go and sitting up, and Pitch’s stomach twisted; she couldn’t really say why it made her reach for Pitchiner’s arm, but Pitchiner only shrugged off the first attempt to grab her, let Pitch keep hold on the second try.

Apologising would have been dishonest. “It’s four stars out of five. It’s not worth celebrating.”

“Seriously?” Pitchiner moved to kneel over Pitch, duvet bunching around her hips, “That’s the best review I’ve seen in the paper. They wouldn’t have given -” she shrugged, exasperated, “Fucking - Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde’s lovechild wouldn’t get a five. Co-written by Arthur Miller.” Pitchiner fisted a hand in Pitch’s hair, tugged her head back and kissed her hard before Pitch could think to fight her off, and Pitch let herself be kissed, let Pitchiner take control for a moment.

There had been a five star review for a play by P. Black before, but it wasn’t hers, and she wasn’t about to admit to the shame. Not when Pitchiner knew about Piki, and not when Pitchiner was one of the only people who didn’t seem to give much of a damn about Piki’s achievements in comparison with her own.

Pitch rolled her tongue against Pitchiner’s, scraped it against sharp teeth, reached up with both hands to start working Pitchiner’s hair loose from its braid. Despite her best attempts to distract herself with the soft mess of Pitchiner’s hair and the roughness of their kiss, she couldn’t help but wonder all the time _why_ Pitchiner valued Pitch’s achievements like she valued those of her teammates.

Pitchiner celebrated opening and closing shows like they were last minute goals, and it was a kind of praise Pitch never knew how to handle; after years of unfavourable comparisons to Piki, Pitch was used to supporting herself rather than waiting for support from her peers. Compliments aimed at her without qualifiers like “You’re getting as good as Piki” or “No wonder you’re twins, you’re both so talented” were rare enough that unadulterated praise left her feeling clumsy and clueless.

Pitchiner pulled back, the hair framing her face a loose and frizzy mess from Pitch’s efforts, and she grinned before sliding both hands up under Pitch’s nightdress, big and warm and pressing down just a little too hard on Pitch’s waist, restricting her breath. “How about I make you come so hard you see five stars?”

Pitch snorted, tried to retain some kind of composure, but failed utterly and burst into laughter, Pitchiner making it even harder to stop by waggling her eyebrows. “What even - god, you -”

Pitchiner slid both hands up to knead her breasts, firm and confident and shameless. “Is that a yes?”

“It’s a maybe,” Pitch replied, dragging Pitchiner down by the hair for another kiss. “Persuade me.”

“With pleasure,” Pitchiner said, her smile all teeth and her kiss no different.

 

Pitchiner didn’t leave her seeing stars, though not for a lack of trying. Pitchiner had a habit of going down on her like there was a medal to be won, taking full advantage of her strength, the length of her fingers, the dexterity of her tongue.

Pitchiner wouldn’t rest until Pitch was shaking, until Pitch bit bruises into her own fist in an effort to keep quiet, and Pitch loved it - loved the adrenaline, loved how Pitchiner made her heart race, how she woke her up from feeling numb. She loved how sex with Pitchiner felt dangerous.

At least, how it felt dangerous when Pitchiner didn’t blow raspberries all over her thighs after she’d finished eating her out.

“What is wrong with you today?” Pitch asked, kicking back weakly with legs that were still re-learning how to function after Pitchiner’s efforts.

“It’s never too early for good pussy,” Pitchiner said, following up another raspberry with a bite. “You got a great review. It’s a Sunday. What am I supposed to be unhappy about?”

Pitch attempted to keep a straight face as she replied, “The ennui of existence,” and succeeded for all of two seconds before a loud, wet raspberry on her stomach ruined the effect. “Get off me,” she said, trying to snarl through her giggles and failing, shoving at the now completely wild mass of Pitchiner’s hair.

“Only if you’ll let me buy you dinner,” Pitchiner replied, crawling back up the bed and holding Pitch down by her shoulders.

“Not McDonald’s,” Pitch said, and Pitchiner laughed before bending low to kiss her on the nose, giving Pitch a lovely view straight down her top.

“Not McDonald’s. A classy lady like you deserves at least Chili’s.”

“You’re a disgrace,” Pitch said affectionately, and Pitchiner knew her well enough to take that as a yes.

 

It wasn’t a yes to Chili’s, although Pitch wouldn’t have protested too much if it was, and in the restaurant Pitchiner managed to keep her hands to herself, if not her feet.

Pitch ignored every single text on her phone. If there was anything important to hear about, she’d hear about it through a call.

She’d earned a day of feeling like her accomplishments mattered, and she intended to enjoy it.

 

The End


	21. Opened Up (Jack/Pitchiner, Wardrobeverse, Mature)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Wardrobeverse  
>  **Pairing:** Jack/Pitchiner, some Jack/Piki references  
>  **Rating:** Mature  
>  **Warnings:** Dubious consent, and I wasn’t certain how to tag this exactly (sadomasochism, self-harm, self-mutilation?) so I’d like to note for safety’s sake that Pitchiner willingly cuts himself on Jack’s ice a lot.  
>  **Summary:** There's something magnetic about Jack, and something just as dangerous.

Even if he wasn’t obsessive about the boy like Piki, Pitchiner had to admit there was something magnetic about Jack. For someone so quiet, who did everything he could to be unobtrusive, he stood out like a flame.

It was hard to be anything but gentle when approaching Jack, even Pitch’s sharp and aggressive manner tamed somewhat by Jack’s skittish behaviour, and Pitchiner couldn’t entirely place where the sentiment came from. It wasn’t as if Jack was a pet - unlike Piki, Pitchiner could grasp that Jack had a mind of his own - but it wasn’t as if he thought of Jack as a friend either.

Jack didn’t really suit labelling, and Pitchiner didn’t feel the attraction between them was anything as innocent as infatuation or as empty as lust. It felt almost like a challenge - some sort of call that wanted to be answered.

 

It was curiosity more than anything else that had Pitchiner cornering Jack and asking if he could touch him, Jack stuttering out that he didn’t want to hurt anyone and Pitchiner saying he didn’t give a damn if he got stung, shrinking down until he only towered a foot or so over Jack.

Pitchiner generally preferred his larger form both for comfort and for how much it pissed Pitch off, but dealing with Jack was a lot easier in a smaller body, made handling him feel a lot less like cradling a particularly fragile cactus.

He was telling the truth about his lack of concern for pain. A little bloodshed didn’t concern him a great deal, especially when it came from the points standing out around Jack, cold and sharp. Pitchiner had endured jagged cuts and searing burns before; a touch of cold was positively refreshing in comparison.

Jack held his breath as Pitchiner ran a finger over the icicles draped around his neck, not quite forming high enough to make a spiked collar, but preventing easy access to Jack’s skin. “Can you feel this?” Pitchiner asked, curious.

“Not really, i-i-it’s like through, t-touching through clothes,” Jack replied, and Pitchiner cocked his head, grasped an icicle by the tip and pushed the base of it back against Jack’s chest.

“How about this?” Jack nodded, and Pitchiner pushed his thumb up, snapping off the very tip of the icicle. “And this?”

Jack flinched at the sound of cracking ice, but shook his head. “I-it grows on me. It doesn’t hurt if I don’t touch it.”

Pitchiner grinned before pushing down on row after row, snapping icicles in two and watching them fall to the floor and shatter, exposing leggings and a flash of the skin buried underneath all that ice before hooking his thumbs in Jack’s belt. “And to think you cover all this up. Ever touch yourself?” Pitchiner asked, licking his lips as he traced Jack’s stomach with his fingertips, his skin tingling as it alternated between numbing from Jack’s cold and reheating through Pitchiner’s own command of magic.

“I n-never - I wouldn’t -”

“It’s not dirty, you know,” Pitchiner said, smirking regardless. “Especially if other people aren’t touching you, and you want to. I’ve done it. Pitch has definitely done it.” Jack flushed, avoiding Pitchiner’s eyes, and Pitchiner slid his hands a little lower, cupping Jack’s narrow hips. “Does Piki ever get you off?”

Jack shook his head before blanching, somehow going whiter than white, stuttering so hard Pitchiner couldn’t make out a word. He couldn’t resist laughing; Piki’s weakness for Jack and complete inability to do anything about that weakness was almost as entertaining as Pitch’s tantrums.

“Would you like to?” He bent down, caught one of Jack’s earlobes between his teeth and bit it gently; Jack latched onto him with both hands and pressed close in response, pinpricks and deeper stabs of pain erupting across Pitchiner’s chest, tearing through cloth and into skin. “Little anemone.”

“I’ll h-hurt you,” Jack said, arching when Pitchiner pressed his thumbs into the indents where Jack’s hips met with his thighs, the icicles still dotted across Jack’s clothing cutting deeper with every motion that brought the two of them closer.

“I know,” Pitchiner said, moving one hand from Jack’s hip to his cock and taking hold gently, careful not to startle Jack now that he had him right where he wanted him. “A spot of blood never scared me.”

“It scares me,” Jack said, wide eyed, tilting his head back as Pitchiner started to stroke him with long, lazy slides of his occupied hand, not taking a firmer grip yet.

Pitchiner licked a wet stripe across Jack’s neck, watched his saliva crystallise on cold skin before pulling his free hand out of Jack’s leggings to brush it away, Jack’s shivering breaths and desperate clinging something he could get addicted to with ease.

When he tightened his hold on Jack’s cock and increased the speed and roughness of his strokes, the strangled cry Jack let out was impossible to resist, and he shoved Jack up against the wall, icicles snapping and cracking when he did, willingly impaled himself as he kissed Jack hard.

Blood smeared hot down his own chest, turning cold as it met Jack’s ice, and frostbite had never tasted so good.


	22. Something Borrowed (Pitch/Pitchiner, Nightmare Dork University, Teen and Up Audiences)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Pitch/Pitchiner (with references to Jack/Piki, past Jack/Pitchiner, and past Katherine/Nightlight/Pitchiner. Also, Pitchiner daydreaming about Piki/Pitch because he’s an incorrigible pervert)  
>  **Rating:** Teen and Up Audiences  
>  **Summary:** The obligatory marriage fic. I am unshamed.

“I’m not drunk enough for this. I’m not. Where did I put that damned hip flask?” Pitch checked his pockets before flinching and looking in the mirror again, straightening his clothes and fixing his hair. “Oh god, this is a mistake. I look hideous. This is a huge mistake.”

“Yes, no, and yes,” Piki said, grabbing Pitch’s hands before the constant hair adjusting could ruin the hard work Piki had put into it, “I wouldn’t let you out if you were a mess and I’m fairly certain your drinking is what got us all here in the first place. Now man up, put on your tie, and go marry your idiot boyfriend.”

Pitch swallowed down his nausea, nodded, and fumbled his way through putting on his tie with numb fingers, feeling an awful lot like he was tightening a noose.

 

“At least I’m not drunk this time, right?” Pitchiner asked, remembering the disaster with Katherine and Nightlight in Las Vegas where there had been a massive morning after panic courtesy of three-way marriage being less than legal, followed by desperate attempts to make sure that Pitchiner’s marriages to Katherine and Nightlight were both written off.

Nightlight and Katherine opted to stay married, and much as he’d claimed not to be jealous, it was one of the moments when he’d started to realise that even if he adored both of them - still did, which was why they’d been invited to the wedding - polyamory wasn’t really for him. It worked for them though, judging by the fact they were accompanied by an older man Pitchiner knew full well wasn’t father to either of them.

Pitch had objected to the invitation briefly, until Pitchiner pointed out that if they only invited along people neither of them had slept with then the registry office would be empty.

It wasn’t quite true, despite Pitchiner’s occasional and as far as he was concerned perfectly healthy fantasies about having both Black twins at once, but it was close enough to the truth that Pitch had backed down.

Pitchiner was glad for the allowance, especially given his and Jack’s colourful history.

“If Pitch backs out, you could always say yes,” Pitchiner said, grinning when Jack laughed. If he ever found out who Jack’s therapist was, he’d kiss them silly.

“I thought I w-was your forty year back-up?” Jack replied, avoiding eye contact but smiling all the same.

“No time like the present to change your mind.”

“I’ll think about it.” Jack finished fixing Pitchiner’s cufflinks in place and tilted his head up. “Very handsome. I’m sure Pitch will s-swoon.”

“He’d better. I had to go suit-shopping with _Piki_. No offense.”

“None taken,” Jack replied, taking a step back and looking Pitchiner up and down. “I know most people hate shopping with him, but he does know what he’s doing. You look good.”

Pitchiner cleared his throat before daring to take a look in the mirror, and he had to admit, Jack did have a point. It had taken three hours of bitching and moaning and refusal to settle for anything less than the ‘perfect’ cut, but Piki had pulled through for him in the suit shopping department. He looked hot.

And now he had to go marry someone in it. _Fuck_.

“Are you doing this dry or are you -” Pitchiner paused mid-question when Jack dug through the bag he’d brought with him to pull out a bottle of tequila. “- not. Jack, my _man_ , you are a hero.”

“I do my best,” Jack said, snatching the bottle back after Pitchiner had taken a good swig from it and burying it under layers of sweaters - and, Pitchiner noted, an open packet of condoms, which helped explain why Piki had been relatively cheery all week. “Think you’re ready to do this?”

Pitchiner’s stomach was churning, the slow burn of tequila helping to ease it, but when he thought about Pitch’s face the evening he’d finally said _yes_ to one of Pitchiner’s many proposal attempts, he had to grin and nod. “Hell yeah.”

 

The actual exchange of vows went by in a blur, Pitch too focused on remembering his lines to think beyond them, but the moment the important words were said - I now pronounce you legally wed - he felt the rush of being able to _breathe_ again, felt like he was actually seeing Pitchiner in his suit for the first time.

It was terrifying and it was perfect, and when Pitchiner grabbed him, bent him backwards for a hollywood kiss, he started laughing, clinging to Pitchiner’s shoulders.

“You look gorgeous,” Pitchiner whispered, “As soon as the reception’s over…”

Pitch smirked, gave Pitchiner another quick kiss and flicked his tongue against Pitchiner’s in a tease before pulling back so they could get the matter of signing the legal documents over and done with.

 

While they had successfully nixed Proto’s suggestions of “White Wedding” or “Back In Black” for their first dance, handing control of the playlist over to Piki when they couldn’t decide on anything between themselves had still lead to inappropriate results. Less inappropriate than Proto’s would have been, but it was undeniable that Piki’s choice cut close to the bone.

Pitch didn’t seem quite as concerned about the music playing, but Pitchiner couldn’t help it if his grip was a touch possessive as they danced through “Don’t Dream It’s Over”.

They had brushed up against failure all too many times, fights turning into splits, some of them lasting days, one of them lasting years, and Pitchiner knew there would be more in the future. It was in both their natures; Pitch wore his heart on his sleeve whether he wanted to or not, his temper brittle, and Pitchiner couldn’t always resist prodding at it.

They’d always crashed back together though, one way or another, and Pitchiner knew that part of their relationship wasn’t the sole result of great sex and a mutual enjoyment of rubbing each other up the wrong way.

“Guess this means we’re in it for the long haul,” Pitchiner said, and Pitch rolled his eyes.

“That would be the idea of marriage, yes.”

“No take-backs,” Pitchiner said, teasing, leaning in for a kiss; Pitch nipped at his chin, teeth digging in sharp, before he tilted his head up and allowed Pitchiner to kiss him, slowing their dance to a halt for the last few seconds of the song, a predictable chorus of cheering and applause starting up around them.

Pitchiner’s family had attended the reception in droves, cars and trucks and one coach drawing up outside to fill the room, and some of Pitch’s had made a polite appearance, dropping off presents and cards and quick well wishes, a small few of them even opting to stay.

“You know my mom’s going to try and fatten you up,” Pitchiner said, steering Pitch away from the dance floor before any other music could start up. “She thinks a well-fed husband is a husband who’ll stick around.”

“I suppose it worked for her,” Pitch replied, and Pitchiner laughed, finding a dark corner; he knew full well they weren’t out of view of anyone in particular, gripped Pitch by the hips anyway before kissing him again, and again. Piki had chosen Pitchiner’s suit well, Pitch’s even better, and it was getting harder to think of anything but tearing it off. “Can’t you wait another four hours?” Pitch hissed, and Pitchiner groaned at the thought of it.

“When you’re dolled up to the nines? I’m not sure I can wait four minutes. It’s not like you’re in a corset.”

Pitch arched up, pressed his lips close to Pitchiner’s ear. “You’re not finding out what’s under this suit until you carry me across the threshold, _dear_.”

It wasn’t often that Pitch stole Pitchiner’s words from him, but he’d certainly succeeded, and when he slipped out of Pitchiner’s grip to go greet some of their guests, it was hard to do anything but let his mind wander.

Piki probably knew the answer, and wasn't _that_ fun to think about, but Pitchiner hated spoilers.

He could pretend to be well behaved for a few more hours if he suspected the effort would be worthwhile.


	23. A Taste of Something Sweeter (Jack & Proto, Nightmare Dork University, Teen and Up Audiences)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Characters:** Jack and Proto (with brief Pitchiner/Pitch and Jack/Piki references)  
>  **Rating:** Teen and Up Audiences  
>  **Summary:** Proto helps teach Jack to cook, and Jack helps teach Proto to be civil.

Proto had never pictured himself entering into an arrangement that could be considered domestic. Settling down was such a predictable notion, and while he wasn’t averse to it, the thought of spending time doing household chores or watching television together with the same person over and over felt painfully dull.

It was strange then to realise he’d entered into something similar with Jack.

It had started with a simple, unexpected gesture of kindness from Jack, in the form of freshly baked vegan cookies. Proto hadn’t been comfortable accepting the gesture without giving something in return, but Jack wasn’t someone he knew how to shop for.

As Jack had shown an interest in vegan cooking, Proto figured it might be worth giving him a few lessons; unlike Pitchiner, Jack could consider a meal complete without some part of an animal being carved up, milked, or stolen, and he was a far less fussy eater than Pitch.

He still had some bizarre fears to work through - lotus fruit and pomegranates made him anxious, and he had a phobia of anything clustered like Brussels sprouts on the stalk or oyster mushrooms - but he listened to instructions and was careful about following them.

His technical abilities weren’t up to scratch and he had bland taste in seasoning, but he made an effort.

 

In the middle of preparing an eggplant and spinach curry that would look revolting but taste fantastic, Proto caught himself laughing at the thought he’d spent the last fortnight putting more strange things in Jack’s mouth than Piki likely had in the entirety of their courtship.

Jack flinched, instinctively self-conscious, and Proto smiled at him, fully aware his smile did absolutely nothing to settle Jack’s nerves.

“I’m curious,” Proto said, “Have you and Piki fucked yet?”

Jack looked up, surprised Proto by making eye contact. “Shh.”

“I was only asking.”

“You’re being -” Jack frowned, returned his attention to dicing tomatoes for the curry. “You’re nicer than you th-think. When you don’t p-p-pretend you’re not.”

Proto set down his own knife, smile faltering. “You seem sure of that.”

Jack shrugged. “I like you sometimes.”

It was a weighted admission, one that invited questions Proto didn’t want to hear the answer to, so he settled instead for rubbing Jack’s shoulder. “And you’re bearable.”

Jack let out a huff that might have been a laugh in another lifetime, reached up and covered Proto’s hand with his own, skin wet with tomato juice.

The moment lasted a beat too long, Proto’s pulse quickening before they were rudely interrupted by jangling keys, the noise giving them time enough to separate and return to dicing and chopping before Pitchiner kicked open the flat door.

“It’s carnivore Christmas,” Pitchiner cheered, marching over to the freezer and stuffing pack after pack of chicken, pork, beef, and indeterminate other meats inside. “Fridge at the store was busted so everything was cheap as shit.”

“If I get food poisoning I will puke on your sheets,” Pitch said, following behind with somewhat more civilised groceries. “What is _that_?” He asked, grimacing as he looked at the yet to be blended pan full of tomatoes, spinach, roasted eggplant flesh, and spices.

“Dinner,” Proto replied cheerily. “Would you like some?”

“I’ll take my chances with food poisoning, thank you.”

“Your loss.”

 

It was always satisfying to sit down for an early dinner and watch Pitchiner and Pitch scrapping in the kitchen as they made their own. It was all the more satisfying with company, Jack watching the errant couple’s dinnertime show with wide eyes and a telling little smile.

Perhaps it was pushing his luck to ask Jack back over for lunch, telling him truthfully that the leftover curry was always tastier than the first serving thanks to a day of sitting about and letting the spices infuse properly, but it worked. Jack seemed to consider the invitation flattering.

It was odd feeling as if he’d made a friend by accident.

If he took out the discomfort of that oddness on his flatmates by tormenting them more than usual, it wasn’t as if they expected anything different of him.


	24. The Witching Hour (Piki/Pitch, Nightmare Dork University, Mature)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Piki/Pitch  
>  **Rating:** Mature  
>  **Warning:** Incest  
>  **Summary:** Just a quiet moment between the twins in the AU where they’re inseparable, before they've met Pitchiner or Jack.

There had been a time when Pitch hated waking up in the middle of the night, because it meant having to leave Piki, having to go to his own room and wrap his arms and legs around a pillow, trying to hold onto the memory of Piki’s warmth.

University had changed that. University meant freedom, meant sleeping side by side again, sometimes facing each other, sometimes back to back, but always touching, always secure in the knowledge the other was there, safe with them, that they didn’t have to fear their closeness.

Now if Pitch woke in the middle of the night it would be for water, or because he needed the bathroom, or because of light, gentle scratches across his back. Two were necessities by nature. One was necessity because life without Piki at his side had been unbearable.

The scratches didn’t happen often, Piki’s touch with a pen deft and light, but it was a soothing experience rather than a jarring one when they did wake Pitch up. He wasn’t sure what Piki wrote across his skin - wasn’t entirely sure if Piki paid the words much attention either, suspecting it was their form rather than their content that mattered.

Pitch was more than a canvas to Piki in those moments, knew it from the soft kisses pressed to the nape of his neck, the line of his shoulders, sometimes the dip where his back curved before meeting his hips. He was an escape for Piki.

Where Pitch’s temper was explosive and fiery and his moments of anger were over in a flash, Piki’s temper was slow and melancholic and he was inclined to drown in it if he didn’t find a source of release. It wasn’t coincidental that Piki had ended up going from doctor to doctor and pill to pill after the two of them were forcefully separated.

The doctors, the maids, their mother had all feared moments like this - where Pitch offered his body up for Piki and Piki took it - for reasons that were no business of their own. It was ‘sick’, 'wrong’, 'immoral’.

No one seemed to care about the health and happiness of the two people their relationship actually involved.

 

Pitch woke up from a barely remembered dream of running through a forest to find Piki at work again, closed his eyes and relaxed into the careful touches. There had been a threat in his dream, something running alongside him, or perhaps inside him, but the more he stirred the less he remembered, and he was thankful for it.

Piki’s attention seemed focused on his lower back tonight, or perhaps he had been busy for some time - Pitch never really felt the ink once it dried, never knew how covered he was unless he caught a glimpse in a mirror before showering - and it was a welcome distraction, had him half-hard without much of an effort.

“Awake?” Piki asked, knowing the answer full well, and Pitch nodded. They didn’t need a conversation.

Pitch wrapped a hand around his cock and started stroking, Piki not complaining about the sudden shifting of the canvas he’d been working on, continuing to scratch letters down each bump of Pitch’s spine, and Pitch thought about what the words might mean.

He wondered what it would feel like to have the ink beneath his skin - to have it made permanent, something that wouldn’t wash away in the morning shower. What it would feel like to layer words over words until there was nothing to his skin but needle scars and black ink. To be marked by Piki forever.

Piki set the pen aside with a quiet clatter before he pressed up against Pitch, warm and solid, a comfort as Pitch brought himself closer and closer to climax. There was nothing desperate about this, nothing breathless, and when Piki braced himself on one elbow so he could lean over and kiss Pitch on the lips, Pitch tilted his head up eagerly to meet him, knowing the taste of Piki’s tongue as well as his own.

Piki didn’t try to swallow Pitch’s moans as he came, just cupped his free hand around Pitch’s neck and traced his thumb across the hollow in it, watching. The weight of his gaze made orgasm all the more satisfying, Pitch loving to perform, even for an audience of one.

Piki’s hand slid up into Pitch’s hair afterwards, stroked through it, and he pressed a final kiss to Pitch’s forehead before settling down, wrapping one arm loosely around Pitch’s waist.

Pitch had found he slept much easier since starting university, an exception to the rule of every other student he’d run into.

Even with the interruptions.


	25. When Fairy-tales End (Jack/Piki, Nightmare Dork University, General Audiences)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairings:** Jack/Piki, Pitch/Pitchiner  
>  **Rating:** General Audiences   
> **Warning:** Major character death, suicidal thoughts  
>  **Summary:** The problem with humans is that they’re human. Piki dies, and Jack mourns.

**-1**

“You realise I have work to do,” Piki said, combing his fingers through Jack’s hair.

“It’s not my fault you’re a comfy pillow,” Jack refused to move, enjoying the warmth of Piki’s lap. “Five more minutes?

"Give me the remote and I’ll think about it.”

Jack let out an exaggerated sigh before passing it over, not particularly interested in the documentary they’d left on anyway despite his vague protest. “Ten more minutes?”

“You can have seven,” Piki said, and Jack grinned, settled down and shut his eyes.

 

**0**

Jack’s fingers were numb, barely holding onto the phone, his responses to the questions on the other end of the line panicky, and all he could think was _please wake up, please wake up_.

Not to Piki. To himself. If he woke up, Piki wouldn’t be cold. If he woke up, Piki would be breathing.

Why had he gone to bed, why had he left Piki writing, why hadn’t he kissed him goodnight?

Jack’s stomach clenched and it took everything in him not to vomit through his tears.

 

**1**

Pitch was the first to arrive, after the police and the ambulance. He didn’t say a word, skin white as a sheet, flatly ignoring the advice that he might not want to watch as Piki’s body was zipped into a body bag and carried away.

Pitchiner didn’t say much either, but he sat down next to Jack, pulling him into a hug and rubbing Jack’s back. he only had a touch more colour than Pitch, but he still radiated heat, his warmth dragging out sobs Jack didn’t know he’d had left in him. He felt like he should have run dry.

“Fucking hell,” Pitchiner said, holding Jack tighter and letting Jack cling to him in turn. “I’m sorry.”

Pitch sat down next to them, flinched when Jack reached for him and refused to be drawn into the hug. “Tell me what happened.”

Jack’s voice broke, stuttered over and over as he told the story again, same as he’d told 911, same as he’d told the police.

Piki had stayed up late writing while Jack went to bed. Jack woke, needing the bathroom, and decided to check in on Piki after relieving himself, wondering why Piki hadn’t sneaked into bed next to him yet. Jack found him on the study floor by his chair, face relaxed, eyes half-lidded and vacant, skin cold.

Jack didn’t know how long he’d been dead.

“He was fine,” Jack said, buried his face in Pitchiner’s chest to muffle the sobs that followed as another thought crossed his mind - he’d missed his goodnight kiss. He’d kissed Piki after dinner, but he’d skipped a goodnight kiss in favour of leaving Piki in peace to work.

Thin fingers gripped Jack’s shoulder tight, pulled him from the comfort of Pitchiner’s chest, and Jack turned to be drawn into a hug from Pitch, Pitch’s face twisted and ugly with grief, eyes red-rimmed. It was too tight, but Jack didn’t say a word, not when he could feel Pitch shaking like a leaf, chest heaving.

“I’ll be right back babe, okay? Okay, Jack?” Pitchiner said when there was a knock at the door, sofa lifting once his weight was off it, and a single huff of laughter made it out amongst the sobs as Jack clung tight to Pitch.

He wouldn’t have moved despite his arms aching if he hadn’t seen the reason there had been a knock at the door.

Jack tried for “Hi”, gave up and forced a smile of recognition instead. Proto smiled back, looking oddly resigned, as if this was something he’d prepared for but never wanted.

“I brought breakfast,” Proto said. “Some other odds and ends too. I guessed you wouldn’t have eaten.”

“Thank you,” Jack said, meaning it more than he could ever remember meaning it before, watching as Proto emptied one bag out onto a table before passing the others to Pitchiner. 

“There’s milk and soy for the fridge, toilet roll, toothpaste, spare toothbrushes. Would you put them away?”

“Sure,” Pitchiner replied. Jack wondered if he’d ever heard those two agree before.

“I’m so sorry, Jack.” Jack had heard it before, from the police, from the ambulance crew who confirmed the death, from every last person he’d called and everyone who had texted him after finding out. He was thankful for the support.

Not a word of it helped.

 

**18**

The funeral was well attended and well spoken of. People Jack didn’t always recognise kept saying how sorry they were to hear the news. Pitch and Pitchiner had gone back home, and Proto was about to do the same. Pyotr and Jack had called, apologised for being unable to attend the funeral, sent their love and a condolences card, reassured Jack if he had any financial difficulties they would be more than happy to assist.

Jack couldn’t walk outside without wanting someone, anyone, to give him a reason to punch them, to let him scream that his husband just died, to say that the worst had already happened. He wanted the world to stop. He wanted to know how it kept going when Piki was dead.

Piki’s ashes were sat on the desk in his study, waiting to be scattered. He hadn’t wanted a gravestone in the Black family plot, wanted to be freed by his death.

Jack had never been religious, but still prayed for a visit from Piki each and every night, for a dream, a sign that Piki was safe. He didn’t get one, or if he did, it took no shape he could recognise.

Jack had closed and merged so many accounts in Piki’s name over the last week he was exhausted, and he’d tried going back to work.

He managed to get on the bus. He took two steps off it before crossing the road to take a bus back home, his legs stiff and chest tight.

No one had warned him that mourning meant forgetting how to walk.

 

**74**

Jack had the foresight to book off Piki’s birthday in advance so he could stay indoors and try to forget the world, but while it had undeniably felt good to lie in, when he woke he could only stare at the wall, curled up on his side and trying to go back to sleep. Moving felt impossible, and the books on his bedside table were unappealing.

Jack checked through his texts, checked his emails, wanting something worth waking up for and failing to find it. He’d reread Piki’s texts too many times to count.

Pitch answered the phone without needing to ask who was calling. “What is it?”

“Happy birthday,” Jack said, hugging his pillow tight. Pitch’s voice was so similar to Piki’s, even if his tone and speech patterns were different.

“Thanks,” there was a muffled shifting, Pitch hissing, “It’s Jack, turn the TV down,” before asking, “How are you doing?”

“Okay,” Jack lied. “I just wanted to hear your voice.”

Pitch was quiet for a moment, and Jack clutched the pillow tighter, feeling sick with guilt. He’d seen how people looked at Pitch at the funeral, like he was a ghost, and Jack was barely treating him any differently. “I don’t think this is healthy, Jack.”

“Just tell me what you’ve been up to, please?” Jack asked, hating the hysterical note in his voice as it cracked. “I d-don’t - I don’t know what else to do.”

Pitch shushed him, Pitchiner’s voice in the background asking, “Is he alright?”

“Do you want us to come over?”

Jack fisted his hands in the pillow, stomach churning, hating every possible answer and hating himself more for having to. “Please.”

After a few moments of shifting noises in the background, Pitch said, “I’m keeping my cell with me. If you need anything, call me. Promise me that you’ll call me.” It wasn’t until Pitch asked, “Jack?” that Jack realised he’d only been nodding instead of talking.

“Promise.”

 

**133**

Jack didn’t pray anymore. Proto said religion was more entertaining as a hobby anyway.

It wasn’t getting any easier in the sense of him missing Piki any less, but he was slowly going numb. Memories and regrets he’d thought of before were something he could cope with, though whenever something new came to mind it could still cripple him.

Jack counted every anniversary. The first month since Piki died, the second, the third, and he knew he would keep doing it until at least the first year had passed.

Time felt slower than ever, and the fact Piki had provided more than enough to cover Jack’s living costs for the rest of his life did nothing to change how frightened Jack was of the future.

 

**474**

Jack ate his breakfast, took his pills, drank a glass of water, and looked at the to-do list he’d attached to the refrigerator with a magnet.

He looked back at the medicine cupboard, then at the kitchen sink, thinking of metal on skin.

Not today, he promised himself, ignoring the list and the temptations before picking up a book and a jacket, leaving the house.

Not today.

He could wait.


	26. Escape Artist (Piki/Proto, Nightmare Dork University, Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Piki/Proto  
>  **Rating:** Explicit  
>  **Summary:** Peace and quiet and bondage.

Piki valued alone time. He’d always struggled with turning off his need to analyse others, and time spent in company could be exhausting as a result; even alone, he rarely had a moment he could call peaceful.

As frightening as Proto could be, he was damn near the only person around whom Piki could switch off. Proto was family, which saved Piki from wondering about his background or who to contact in case of emergency, and the fact Proto embraced and even enjoyed his outsider status meant Piki never really feared offending him.

Proto had a talent for giving Piki alone time in bed without making him feel abandoned or ashamed, reducing the world to Piki’s immediate environment and nothing else.

Piki liked the preparation beforehand more than he let on; the teasing and flirting, the closeness to make up for the distance soon to come. It felt wicked and indulgent to kiss Proto, more than it did to fuck him, and Proto knew how much the thought of sin appealed to Piki. He’d take his time with long, thorough kisses and sweet nothings while he taped or roped Piki’s wrists together and tied his blindfold in place.

Piki could have a bit of a hair trigger at times, but Proto knew him and how to manage it all too well, pulling back when Piki was wound too tight and bringing him back down with a head massage or firm rubbing of his shoulders or calves, anything to draw Piki’s body’s attention away from his erection. By the time Proto had finished binding Piki’s limbs together in whatever configuration suited his plans best, Piki would ache all over for touch, feeling at once overstimulated and desperate for more, and it was in that state where he started to feel free.

Proto would give him a last kiss, inserting and clamping on whatever toys he felt like using before leaving Piki in peace, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for the better part of an hour. He let Piki escape into sensation, to lose himself in feeling instead of thinking. The shifting pressure of a vibrator, the buzz of a bullet, the pain of weights tugging on clamps; every toy served a purpose, and Piki liked being helpless against them, knowing he couldn’t reason with metal or plastic or silicone.

Arousal persisted but couldn’t peak, and with the blindfold keeping him from viewing the world around him, and Proto’s room soundproofed in ways Piki tried not to think about too hard, the only sensations available to him were those provided by the toys and his own body. His breath seemed to echo, his blood pounded in his ears, and he was alone in his mind for once.

 

Whenever Proto returned, he would sit quietly for a moment, likely watching, before the kisses would start up again, interspersed with bites and licks as he removed the bindings, the blindfold, any clamps he’d applied. Sensation came flooding back, but reality didn’t, and when Proto decided to make Piki come using the toys or his fingers, his tongue or his cock, Piki felt locked in a dream state, eyes rolling back and mouth agape.

He rarely screamed. He’d need to remember how his throat worked to scream.

Proto always looked satisfied and faintly amused when he cleaned Piki up afterwards, and Piki rarely found the energy to protest if Proto decided to mark the newly cleaned skin with bites and hickeys. He’d earned the territory.

They’d talk for a while then, once Piki could breathe and form whole syllables. That was the strangest thing - how after fucking Piki senseless, Proto would happily stretch out next to him to discuss what they had read or watched recently, the conversation between them perfectly civil. Sometimes heated, their tastes occasionally clashing, but always civil.

Piki would leave feeling both light and sore, as if he’d had a really, really good massage, and while the need to analyse clicking back on almost as soon as he’d stepped outside the flat, he could satisfy that need with a clearer head. He didn’t feel as if he was drowning under the weight of strangers anymore.

 _“Same time next week?”_ came the inevitable text.

 _“Always,”_ went the equally inevitable reply.


	27. Twenty Hands Are Better Than One (Jack/Piki/Proto, NsectDU, Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** NsectDU (in which the Nightmare Dork University characters are all insect or spider people, because of reasons)  
>  **Pairing:** Jack/Piki/Proto  
>  **Rating:** Explicit  
>  **Summary:** Proto happens across the evidence of Piki’s last attempt to mate with Jack, and pheromones fly.

Proto had never really settled in any one garden before. The preening and fussing over plants by humans tended to kill off their occupants just as they were starting to get interesting, and Proto didn’t intend to die in as pedestrian a fashion as being crushed by a shoe or choked by insecticide.

It was refreshing to have found a home at last instead of just a shelter. The garden had been left to run wild by an owner whose interests lay indoors, and its occupants had proven thoroughly entertaining, the Black brothers in particular. Pitch was amusing in how easy he was to set on edge, and Proto liked to drop by and startle him every so often to keep him on all four sets of toes.

Piki was amusing in an entirely different way; Proto couldn’t easily place why he found Piki the more attractive of the twins, but regardless of the reason, he liked catching Piki off guard, liked playing predator to someone who would just as happily have eaten him in another life. Piki liked being bitten, squirmed delightfully whenever Proto demonstrated the strength of his legs, and Proto had grown rather fond of his masochistic friend.

 

Proto tended to ignore his survival instinct in place of observation and analysis, but it was still alarming when he turned up to Piki’s nest and found a pretty little thing cocooned on the floor, its nakedness emphasised rather than concealed by translucent silk. Proto wondered if it was paralysed or if it had suffocated, knew it hadn’t been drained for food yet given the plump, hydrated skin of its cheeks.

He damn near moulted when the moth snored.

Interfering with a spider’s meal was never the wisest idea, but Proto was a herbivore at heart and had to give the moth a gentle shake to wake it up, to check if it was well enough to warrant a rescue attempt.

Bright eyes fluttered open, and Proto covered the moth’s mouth with his upper hands quickly, recognising the fear in those bright pupils as pre-scream panic.

“I’m a vegetarian,” Proto said, keeping his hands firmly in place and hoping the moth’s wriggling wouldn’t attract Piki’s attention from elsewhere in the web. “I’m here to rescue you.”

The moth stopped wriggling in favour of going rigid and blushing fiercely, and Proto pulled his hands away from its mouth, let them join his lower set in unwinding silk from around the moth’s feet. “I- I- I, h-he, um,” stuttered the moth, “He w-wasn’t eating me.”

Proto rolled his eyes, lifted the moth’s legs up to help him with the unwinding, and blinked slowly at what he saw dried on the moth’s ass.

Piki. The deviant.

“I do apologise,” Proto said, setting the moth’s legs back down again with care. “I hadn’t realised you were occupied.”

“I-it’s okay. Who are you?”

Proto tugged roughly on the silk holding the moth’s arms in place until one of them could wriggle free, took its hand in his own to shake it. “Proto. Piki’s cousin.”

The moth didn’t so much as blink. Proto felt oddly put out. “Jack. Could - could you find P-Piki for me? He just - ran. I waited b-but -” Jack ducked his head, embarrassed, and Proto could understand why Piki had found the anxious little creature so appealing.

“I think we should pay him a visit together,” Proto said, pulling Jack’s cocooned body free from the leaf he’d been pinned to and carrying him in his lower set of arms. Piki owed Jack an explanation for abandoning him, and Proto didn’t want to miss the entertainment of hearing that answer.

 

Of course Piki had curled up to hide inside a rose. Of course.

“Cousin, dear?” Proto cooed, recognising the feet sticking out of the flower’s petals all too well. “Care to tell me why you left a naked moth on your doorstep?”

“Oh g-god,” Jack said, trying to hide his face in Proto’s abdomen, and Proto smirked, stroked one of his free hands through the soft strands of Jack’s hair.

Piki stuck his head out, fangs bared and face furious until he caught sight of Jack, whereupon his expression took a mortified turn. “That - this has nothing to do with you!”

Proto cocked his head to one side. “You came on him and ran. Given that we occasionally fuck, I think -”

“What is wrong with you?” Piki yelled shrilly before crawling down out of the rose, snatching Jack from Proto’s arms and rearing up on his hind legs in an attempt to look menacing. If Proto hadn’t spent so much time between those legs, it might have worked.

“I could ask the same,” Proto said, stepping closer and flaring his wings before pausing to sniff the air. “I could ask the same,” he repeated, to Jack this time, watching the moth’s feathery antennae flicker anxiously. “Is it the fighting you like, Jack? Or the being protected?”

Piki held tight to Jack, seemingly unaware that the pretty and defenceless bundle in his arms was making himself seem all the more pretty and defenceless through the pheromones given off by his antennae. “Th-there’s no need to fight over me,” Jack said, and Proto’s blood felt impossibly hot at the thought of fighting Piki for the moth, of stamping on Piki’s chest until it cracked and split -

\- the smell changed, shifted subtly, and apparently Piki could smell it as clearly as Proto did because Piki started kissing him before he had a chance to work out what that change had been.

“Stop,” Proto said, relieved when Piki did with a look that was as reluctant as it was confused, and took off his scarf to wrap it around Jack’s antennae. “I hope for your sake that’s involuntary,” Proto said, staring at Jack to search for any cracks in that innocent facade.

Piki seemed shaken as he cut Jack free from the remaining silk that had cocooned him. “Would anyone be kind enough to explain what just happened?”

“Your little boyfr-”

“I made pheromones,” Jack interrupted, covering his modesty with two hands and his face with another. “I, I panicked, I’m sorry, I th-thought it w-w-would be safe -”

Piki curled up around Jack, wrapping the moth up in his arms as surely as he had done with his silk earlier. “Shh, shh, it’s okay. We’re fine. You didn’t hurt anyone.”

Proto rubbed his legs together, letting out a low, irritated hum. “Well, if you two are quite done excusing each other’s recklessness -”

A small, soft hand grazed his arm, catching his attention. “Stay?” Jack asked, and Proto tilted his head, curiosity piqued.

“Why would I want to do a thing like that?”

Jack looked between Proto and Piki, took one of Piki’s hands in his own. “I thought - I mean, you, you looked really g-good kissing and, I- I-”

Proto pressed a finger to Jack’s lips before the moth worked himself into hyperventilation, watched Piki’s face as he stroked that finger down Jack’s chin. “Well?” He asked Piki, keeping his tone light and airy, “I can’t say I’m averse to the idea. Are you?”

Piki’s eyes flared wide before he grabbed Proto by the back of his head and pulled him into a kiss that felt like an attack, a kiss with more teeth than tongue and the threat of venom barely held back.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Proto said when Piki broke away from the kiss, and grinned before starting to strip; he didn’t bother to lend Piki a hand, given that the spider had limbs to spare and a naked moth eager to help in his arms.

It was an oddly quiet moment, and afforded Proto a chance to better assess Jack. The scarf wrapped around Jack’s antennae made him look disturbingly cute, but there were shadows under his eyes that gave away his maturity in a way Proto trusted far more than the presence of wings. He was a soft-bellied, lightly furred, delicate creature, and part of Proto wondered how Piki had resisted devouring him.

Once Piki had finished shedding his clothes, Proto helped Jack to straddle Piki’s lap, back pressed to Piki’s chest and short legs spread wide by Piki’s skinnier ones, and took the moth’s head in his upper hands. “I’m going to take my scarf back, provided you can control yourself. If you make either of us aggressive again, this is over. Do you understand?”

Jack nodded, held still as Proto unwound his scarf to free the delicate antennae, the feathery appendages fluttering instinctively on release.

Pheromones were intoxicating by nature, so Proto was cautious as he inhaled Jack’s scent, a slow smile creeping across his face before he kissed Jack deeply. Jack’s pheromones were delicious in that moment, soft and needy and shot through with a hint of nervousness. Proto couldn’t blame Piki for tilting Jack’s head up to steal a kiss for himself; the way Jack went rigid at the first press of lips to his own before relaxing could turn anyone predatory.

It only seemed fair to enjoy what he had access to while Jack’s lips were preoccupied, and Proto decided to test a hypothesis he’d had about moths and their feet for some time, kneeling to take the soft pads of Jack’s feet in his hands and stroke them. His hypothesis was proven when Jack gasped into Piki’s mouth, cock twitching against his stomach, and as Proto continued tracing idle patterns with his fingers Jack’s toes curled, his wings trembling.

“Sensitive, are we?” Proto asked, lifting one of Jack’s feet to lick across its surface, the moth bucking up hard enough in response he almost slipped out of Piki’s lap.

Piki’s irritated hiss at the interruption was as delightful as Jack’s arousal, and Proto was more than happy to be dragged up by a long, skinny arm into another of Piki’s biting kisses, Jack grasping eagerly at Proto’s chest and Piki’s arms as he was crushed between them.

It was a pleasant surprise when Jack’s hands moved lower, and Proto groaned lazily into Piki’s mouth as Jack grasped and stroked his cock. Even if Jack’s touch lacked finesse, there was a confidence to it that Proto hadn’t expected, and he smirked at the evidence of there being more to Jack than wide-eyed naivety.

Entertaining as kissing Piki was, Jack’s hands had caught his attention, and Proto snatched Jack out of the spider’s lap to lay him down on the floor, supporting his wings with one hand as he kissed the moth again, hungrily, wanting to know all the secrets of the shy yet forthright creature’s tongue.

Piki didn’t appreciate the change of pace, cursed as he flattened himself down next to them, eight limbs being a disadvantage for once. He tried to shove himself in place of Proto again, but Proto pushed a leg up against Piki’s abdomen, shooting him a warning look as he pulled back from Jack’s lips, thirsty for more. “You need to learn to share, cousin,” Proto cautioned before swapping from straddling Jack’s legs to kneeling by them and sliding a hand down Jack’s stomach. “There are other places to kiss.”

A heated look replaced the jealousy on Piki’s face as he pressed a kiss to Jack’s cheek, letting Proto keep Jack’s mouth for himself this time, and continued kissing his way down Jack’s neck, chest, stomach, lips grazing Proto’s hand before they reached Jack’s cock.

Jack reacted like he’d never been touched before, breaths shallow and fast, long eyelashes fluttering and his hands reaching out to clutch Piki’s hair, Proto’s shoulder, anything he could grab with ease. Proto knew the talents of Piki’s mouth well, but it was still fascinating to watch Jack come undone through Piki’s efforts, to taste desperation on his tongue as they kissed.

Proto could be analytical during sex at times, picking up on areas where there was room for improvement and instructing his partners accordingly, but something about Jack made his mind short-circuit and he wasn’t entirely convinced Jack’s pheromones were responsible.

It almost seemed vulgar to attend to his own needs, but kissing Jack while listening to the wet sounds of Piki’s mouth, the quiet hum of pleasure as if Jack was the most delicious thing Piki had ever tasted, that sort of stimulation asked for satisfaction, and moving to straddle Jack’s face only made sense.

Were it Piki beneath him, Proto would have fisted a hand in the spider’s hair and guided him roughly, knowing what the spider liked, but Jack required a certain kind of delicate treatment. He could have let Jack use hands alone, but the growl Piki let out as Proto lifted Jack gently and offered him his cock was almost as delicious as the feeling of Jack’s tongue tasting him; besides, it was fun to listen to the hitch in Piki’s breath at seeing how innocent Jack _wasn’t_ , willingly stroking Proto’s cock, willingly taking it between his sweet, soft lips to suck it.

He could have happily fucked Jack’s mouth until he came if Piki hadn’t interrupted him after a while, hands wrapping around Proto’s waist and tugging until he backed up and turned around, Piki’s lips looking bruised and sore. “What did you say about sharing?” Piki asked, and Proto smirked, nodded.

“Fair point,” Proto replied before kissing Piki briefly, then trading places with him, watching Jack swallow Piki down just as eagerly as he had swallowed Proto.

He had to give Piki a little guidance first, making sure the spider lifted Jack enough to keep his wings from being crushed - wingless lovers could be forgetful at times - but Piki was even gentler with Jack than he had been himself.

Proto stroked up and down the inside of Jack’s thighs a few times before lifting them, settling Jack’s legs over his shoulders, wrapping one hand around Jack’s cock and cupping Jack’s ass with two of the others; he didn’t need more than one for himself, not with everything else he could hear and taste and feel.

He’d barely taken Jack in his mouth before he heard Piki cry out, legs trembling, and blinked at the discovery that Piki apparently had a hair trigger as far as Jack was concerned. Proto had enjoyed Jack’s mouth thoroughly, but the moth wasn’t _that_ talented, and Proto had spent many a long and pleasant afternoon alone with Piki before.

He didn’t run away this time though, moved to sit behind Jack, all four legs curled under him as he lifted Jack’s head up into his lap, stroking his hands through Jack’s hair and down his shoulders.

Proto looked up at Piki, curious but not so curious that he felt like pulling away from Jack’s cock, and Piki looked back, face slightly tense.

“Jack and I aren’t as compatible as I’d like,” Piki said, sliding a hand over Jack’s face and slipping his fingers between Jack’s lips, giving the moth something to suck on. Proto had to admit to being surprised when Jack did, with the same enthusiasm he’d shown both his and Piki’s cocks. “Moths last… they last longer.”

Proto shrugged, figured his jaw wasn’t aching yet and he had no doubts Piki would happily take over again once he’d had time to rest his own.

“Twenty minutes is embarrassing to a moth.”

Proto did pull back then, giving Jack’s ass a gentle squeeze of encouragement before he grinned up at Piki. “As luck would have it, so is forty for a grasshopper.” a moment’s pause, and Proto laughed. “Didn’t you ever wonder why I always start without you?”

Proto felt soft hands tighten in his hair, and allowed himself to be guided back to Jack’s cock.

Piki didn’t seem to mind playing the part of their audience.

 

The better part of an hour passed before Jack arched up, wings flaring and a choked-off scream on his lips as he came - and came, and came, soaking his stomach and Proto’s hands, and Proto couldn’t help but feel relieved he’d opted to pull away instead of trying to swallow Jack’s come. Jack’s soft hands had an iron grip, and Proto knew he’d carry bruises from them later, bruises he’d wear with pride.

Jack seemed to damn near empty himself out, was incoherent when Piki helped him up onto his knees so he could set to work cleaning Jack without doing any damage to his wings, and Proto willingly spared two arms to assist, keeping the others for his own cock. It would have felt rude not to follow Jack in coming after such a lovely performance on Jack’s part.

Spider’s silk wasn’t ideal for cleaning, but it made do in a pinch, and rubbing a fistful of it over Jack’s skin was a sensory delight. A three way kiss between himself, Piki, and Jack was an equally messy sort of entertainment, mouths and tongues slipping and sliding against each other without any real sort of coordination, and although Piki grumbled a little when Proto added to the mess with his own orgasm, he aided in that clean-up just as willingly as he had with Jack.

“I think you have a taste for herbivores,” Proto said to Piki, teasing him even as he nuzzled Jack’s neck, post-coital bliss making him feel even fonder of the moth now than he had been when buried in Jack’s mouth.

“And you’re just a deviant,” Piki replied. Proto shrugged. He couldn’t particularly argue with the statement, and wasn’t sure he wanted to.

“You’re both good looking,” Jack said, blindly patting a hand against each of their faces, not bothering to open his eyes. “Verrrry good looking.”

When Jack slumped in Piki’s arms and started snoring, Proto doubted Piki was any more surprised than he was.

 

Piki was surprisingly civil in leading Proto from his choice of territory, even parting ways with a kiss before retreating to do whatever it was he intended to do with Jack, which likely involved either eating or cuddling, neither of which appealed to Proto.

Proto took the moment of quiet to enjoy a good stretch before heading off in search of food, and in search of Pitch.

After such an entertaining time in Piki’s company, it only felt right to find and torment Pitch with the details.


	28. Reconnect and Reconnect (Jack/Piki/Pitch/Pitchiner/Proto, Nightmare Dork University, Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Jack/Piki/Pitch/Pitchiner/Proto  
>  **Rating:** Explicit  
>  **Warning:** Incest (brother/brother and cousin/cousin)  
>  **Summary:** A little collection of three sentence OT5 moments from the inseparable twins verse.

Piki was the first they all gathered around, celebrating the adaptation of one of his plays into a movie with Jack and Pitch at first - he couldn’t help it if he played favourites - by getting drunker than he ought to and kissing Jack while palming Pitch’s cock through his pants in the back of the car.

Pitchiner somehow managed to get all of them home safe and sound despite stealing looks in the rear view mirror as often as he could, and practically hauled them all indoors, Pitch an affectionate drunk as usual and making Pitchiner’s life difficult by groping him every step of the way.

The fact Proto was visiting and had yet to leave felt something like fate, and while Piki was undoubtedly still drunk when he said it, Piki knew perfectly well what he was signing himself up for when he threw an arm around Proto’s neck, not bothering to let go of Jack’s hand, and loudly declared, “All of you need to have sex with me, right now.”

 

Proto was exhausting in every imaginable way, long limbs and a creative streak keeping everyone guessing, and it was rare when he was in the middle for anyone to emerge without interesting and often long-lasting marks all over.

He paid the highest of respects to boundaries, only pushing them if given explicit permission to do so, and seemed to have no limits on what he was willing to explore; Jack enjoyed temperature play, Piki liked bondage and vibrators, Pitchiner had a love-hate relationship with sensory deprivation, Pitch admitted nothing but had an obvious asphyxiation kink.

When Proto took center stage, he would simply set out whatever toys he felt like using around the room, sit down, and tell the others to let rip; thanks to Proto’s tendency to leave scissors around and his fondness for cheap clothing, it wasn’t unheard of for literal ripping to be involved either.

 

Everyone liked to spoil Jack rotten when he was in the middle; he was easy to overwhelm and eager to please, and they would take their time with him, kiss him all over and put on something of a show, Piki and Pitch taking advantage of their similarity and mirroring each other’s moves until Jack was breathless.

Pitchiner’s fondness for manhandling was rarely more apparent than when Jack was involved, and Jack’s weakness for skin to skin contact made them a good match; it was hard to share Jack when he liked having the warmth of a chest against his front and his back, but they all made do, cradling him between each other and tending to him with care.

More often than not Jack wouldn’t make a sound when he came, breath caught in his throat and eyes shut tight as he dug his fingers into whoever was in front of him, but if he did speak he’d leave everyone hypnotised by his cries of “please” and “more”, and they were helpless to do anything but obey.

 

Pitchiner was always entertaining in the middle because he was greedy, determined to fuck and be fucked by everyone, happily bending Pitch in half while Proto fucked him from behind, offering Jack his mouth and Piki his hand.

As far as Pitchiner was concerned, it wasn’t a real gang-bang unless he got to handle everyone’s cocks or asses at least once, and he wasn’t above physically dragging people over to be sucked or fingered, had on one memorable occasion lifted Proto up against the wall and fucked him senseless after Proto had spent most of the night casually observing matters instead of involving himself in them; Proto came so hard he staggered afterwards, and it was damn near the only time anyone had ever seen him flustered.

Pitchiner had strength and stamina, wasn’t afraid to use either, and it wasn’t unusual for everyone to collapse in an exhausted pile at the end of it all - which suited Pitchiner just fine, given his penchant for cuddling.

 

When Pitch took center stage, he would be the grabbiest of all of them at first, taking rough kisses from everyone and leaving scratches and bites anywhere he could reach, practically feral until Piki or Jack brought him down a little with gentler touches, softer kisses.

Pitch couldn’t be tamed much or for long, getting off on pain and manhandling, but Proto and Pitchiner were well versed in providing both and returned Pitch’s violence with bites and bruises of their own, letting Jack and Piki kiss and lick any wounds left behind.

Pitch tended to shout the house down if his mouth was unoccupied and uncovered when he came, and while it did mean travelling with him required taking care of that tendency to be vocal, at least it was satisfying to hear the proof of a job well done.

 

There were moments when the five of them couldn’t be together for reasons other than physical distance, moments when touch wasn’t enough to fix the damage done by a word, and the five would become four, or three, or two.

There were moments when that would last for months, even years at a time.

Finding each other again left bruises of a different sort, but Pitch and Piki’s beds always had room enough for those they missed, and when Jack’s softness, Pitchiner’s roughness, or Proto’s particular variety of interesting rejoined them, learning how the five of them could fit together anew was always worth the effort.


	29. A Little Bit of Something New (Pitchiner/Sandie, Pitch/Sandy, Nightmare Dork University, Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Pitchiner/Sandie, Pitch/Sandy  
>  **Rating:** Explicit  
>  **Summary:** In which fem!Sandy dominates Pitchiner while her doppelganger does much the same to Pitch.

Pitchiner hadn’t signed up for this.

Well, technically he had, because otherwise he wouldn’t be on all fours with a strap-on bigger than any sensible human cock buried almost to the hilt inside him, but he hadn’t signed up for the part where his general lack of interest in women was disrupted by one who was nearly the opposite of everything he usually went for.

Outside the obvious of Sandie being a woman, she was also short, blonde, tanned, and fat. She just happened to make it look stunning. Sandie had a tendency to wear outfits she’d practically spill out of, tight jeans and low-cut tops that showed off her soft, jiggling curves, and she didn’t give a shit about what other people thought about her.

When she slammed her book down on a guy’s hand in class so hard she almost broke his fingers, Pitchiner had fallen a little bit in love. He wasn’t sure if the guy deserved it, but he'd had a lot of fun thinking up reasons why Sandie was prone to random acts of violence.

Maybe that tendency was what had drawn Pitch’s interest too; he wasn’t attracted to Sandie in the same way, but her borderline doppelganger Sandy definitely had, and each time Pitchiner lifted his head to take a proper breath he was treated to the sight of Pitch bound and gagged and squirming under Sandy’s touch.

Sandie kept humming to herself as she fucked him, as if her perfectly manicured hands were doing the dishes rather than stroking his cock, and he felt her bend forward, the soft heat of her breasts pressing against his back, the hard points of her nipples dragging across his skin. “Your cock’s drooling all over my hands, you silly thing. Are you going to clean them for me?”

Pitchiner wanted to tell her to fuck off, to assert himself in front of Pitch if nothing else, but the ungiving stretch of hard silicone inside him felt too good, Sandie’s finger rubbing over the slit of his cock an agonisingly sharp sort of pleasure, and he nodded, felt her kiss his back before straightening up again, her hips snapping against his in quick jerks that had him seeing stars.

When he looked over at Pitch again, Pitch’s hands tied demurely in front of him, come all over his stomach and thighs, and his lips stretched around Sandy’s cock, that was the breaking point and Pitchiner’s groans turned feral as Sandie fucked him through his orgasm.

“Good boy,” she said, voice teasing and soothing all at once, the sound of shifting cloth and metal accompanying her voice, and he realised after a moment she’d unbuckled the strap-on without pulling out from him. “Roll over.”

He grunted, not wanting to move, and yelped when she bit his ass.

“Roll over,” she repeated, a firmer note in her voice this time, and he obeyed, rolled onto his back carefully so as not to injure himself. “Open your mouth.”

Pitchiner couldn’t help it if his cock gave an interested twitch when Sandie held out her hands, still wet with his come, and he licked her fingers clean, watched her smile as he did like some sort of benevolent, perverted Earth goddess.

He wasn’t sure why he liked making her smile so much, suspected she and her doppelganger were some sort of buy one succubus, get one incubus free deal.

“I think you’ve earned a treat,” Sandie said, moving to straddle his face and bracing herself, and Pitchiner took a deep breath, mostly unfamiliar with the folds and softness and what exactly to do with them, relieved when she pressed one hand between her legs and instructed, “Lick here, suck these, do anything you like to this.”

 

It took time and practice, but Pitchiner was a determined learner when the subject interested him, and when Sandie shuddered, voice rising and rising on every breath before she cried out and came, thighs trembling where Pitchiner supported them with his hands, he figured Sandie was a subject he’d happily become an expert in.


	30. A Cage Meant To Be Filled (Piki/Proto, Dressmaker's Secret, Teen and Up Audiences)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Dressmaker's Secret  
>  **Pairing:** Piki/Proto  
>  **Rating:** Teen and Up Audiences  
>  **Warnings:** References to stillbirth, brief violence and threat of vomiting.  
>  **Summary:** Proto is a dressmaker dealing with depression, and Piki is a ghost who just so happens to inhabit Proto's mannequin.

Proto was used to dropping projects. He had spent the last few years moving from hobby to hobby - knitting, embroidery, baking, and herbalism amongst others - practising each for a month or two before taking up a new craft. It wasn’t so much that he was fickle as that he was prone to turning numb, and distracting himself with the development of new skills helped to fight those turns. It was difficult to sustain interest in anything he already knew, and branching out made the world feel a little less dull.

Sometimes, if he was lucky and his energy returned, he could circle around to skills he’d enjoyed learning before and develop them further. He was quite pleased with his abilities both as a home brewer and as a dressmaker, though they would still fall into disuse if a bad turn hit.

The company of others didn’t help much, though he had tried using his attraction to his cousin as a means of escape. It was perverse to want Pitch, and the illicit thrill of that want gave Proto something to wake up for. Pitch was strikingly beautiful, but was more interesting for the energy he generated, always seeking attention and adoration and eagerly accepting Proto’s supply of both. Proto would never be at Pitch’s command, but he enjoyed bringing gifts or offering positive critiques in exchange for conversation.

Then Pitch cut him out. For all the looks they had shared, the moments where flirtation came breathlessly close to action, and the one time Pitch had rested his hand on Proto’s thigh under the table at a restaurant for the entirety of their conversation, their relationship had been a game to Pitch. As soon as Pitchiner became part of Pitch’s university life, he lost all pretence of interest in others; he and Pitchiner fought and fucked like animals, hissed and spit and scratched at each other, and Pitch had always revelled in his vicious streak.

The possibility of a new sexual relationship seemed distant and uninteresting with Pitch out of the picture, but Pitch and Pitchiner both made for tolerable friends, and there were others in his art classes Proto was fond of.

Jack Sickle was quieter inside the classroom than outside, thoughtful to the point of being damn near a different person entirely, and Proto actively liked several of the lecturers. Mr Mansnoozie tended to keep his words to a minimum, his criticisms constructive unless a student was disruptive enough to warrant having their asses handed to them in writing, and there wasn’t an ounce of pretension in him. He enjoyed natural beauty, dynamic story book sketches, old greats and modern abstracts, and he didn’t automatically brush off Proto’s efforts as morbid or depressing.

The worst Proto had ever heard from him was an accusation of producing exquisite fragments, works that demonstrated great potential but never came across as complete. It was a perfectly valid accusation, and one Proto hoped his latest project would help to fix.

In and of itself, the antique frame was inspiring. It begged for dresses and gowns and skirts to be crafted around its gentle curves, begged for lace and ruffles to compliment its age or spikes and asymmetry to contrast it.

Proto didn’t make a habit of splashing out, tried to avoid dipping his hand in the family coffers for perfectly justified concerns of being bitten, but the impulse to purchase the frame had been so strong he didn’t want to question it. Feeling was a luxury during his bad turns, and he embraced sensation wherever he could find it.

He had owned the dressmaking frame barely a month when a nightmare gave him inspiration no dream ever could.

 

Smoke coiled under his bedroom door, rolled upwards and outwards to take a shape too tall and too loose at the edges to be human, a face eerily close to his own emerging from the smoke and watching him evenly.

The lack of malice in its eyes didn’t fool him. It wasn’t something bestial or angry, it was something much older. Something that saw Proto as an insect fit for smothering with chloroform and pinning to a board.

Proto clambered out of bed, ran for the window and saw only more smoke outside, turned and found himself face to face with the creature. A claw-like finger caught him under the jaw before he could duck out of the way, its very tip cutting into his skin. “You should know better than that by now,” it said, more hands emerging from within the smoke to grab Proto’s arms and pin him back against the glass, the threat of falling through the window feeling like mercy compared to that ice-cold touch.

“These aren’t ours,” came a voice from behind the smoke creature, and it raised an eyebrow, smoke clearing a path so it could look over where a shoulder should have been. A blanched doppelganger of Pitch stood in front of the dressmaking frame, and Proto could make out a human shape beneath the viscous black ooze it wore as robes, folded arms conveying disinterest. “That isn’t your toy. You took a wrong turn. _Again_.”

The smoke creature shrugged, expression perfectly placid. “Forgive me if they all start to look the same after a while. Can’t we have a bit of fun first?” the finger under Proto’s chin dragged a thin line down his neck, the sting of split skin following its path. Proto grit his teeth, tried not to move despite the trickle of blood from the cut making him itch to run.

“I am not taunting a hunk of _metal_ while you play games,” spat Pitch’s doppelganger, turning to face them both, and Proto could see all the ways it wasn’t quite Pitch - its hair slicked back, its jaw a little narrower, eyes a little more deep set. “Find us. The right. Dream.”

The smoke creature pulled away its hands, shaking them loosely before letting them disappear back into the shadows they came from, and sighed in a way that seemed anything but despondent before gliding over to Pitch’s doppelganger, wrapping itself around slick black shoulders and smirking. “I can’t leave him without one good memory,” it said, smoke fanning out to cover Pitch’s doppelganger entirely and face retreating into that same smoke before the two of them disappeared as suddenly as they had arrived.

Proto felt wet lumps catch in his throat and retched before falling to his knees, covering his mouth as he continued retching and refusing to look at what he could taste, what he knew would be red and raw and dead -

\- he woke, cold but drenched in sweat with the taste of meat fresh in his mind but not on his tongue, and after a drink of water and waiting for the initial panic to fade he grabbed a sketchpad, started drawing.

The smoke creature didn’t bear remembering, attempts to capture its smile feeling like an invitation for it to smile back at him, but something about Pitch’s doppelganger haunted him. It felt like Pitch with the sharpness in him removed, or more accurately buried, the same bone structure if given a touch more femininity.

Sketched out, it was almost beautiful.

 

Proto found himself looking at the sketch over and over after a less fitful sleep took him through to morning, building on the original with new sketches and experimenting by softening some angles further while leaving others sharp.

He was used to horror, to creating images that unsettled, but this not-quite-Pitch was something he could admire from an entirely aesthetic point of view. Its lips were still thin but not to a point of seeming mean or cruel, its eyes black and bright, and he hovered his finger over a charcoal mouth, wishing he could brush something more solid.

The antique frame seemed to beckon him over the second that wish finished forming.

 

Repetitive tasks had a bad reputation for being dull and uninspiring, but Proto had always found them soothing. After the nerve-wracking task of shaping the doll’s face, punching hairs into its head one by one gave him a way to think without thinking - a way to keep busy without paying attention to the outside world.

The hair he had chosen for the doll was softer than Pitch’s, wouldn’t easily style into the spikes Pitch favoured, but the closer he was to finishing, the more he was convinced that leaving it loose would be better.

It had been tempting to look for a vintage wig stand to start his doll, something that might compliment the dressmaking frame better, but modern materials gave more flexibility for shaping and he’d always had a soft spot for contrast. It was part of what drew him to thrift stores, the mix of old and new, plastic and brass, chipboard and rosewood.

The arms and legs he had bought for the doll were more for show than anything else, both a touch longer than was strictly necessary for the frame, but the slender, ball-jointed limbs suited it regardless. He wasn’t in any position to comment on the doll being a touch lanky given his own proportions, and he liked the height they gave.

He wasn’t sure when he started talking to the doll - wasn’t sure if he’d ever talked to the other mannequins he’d acquired over time, when he thought about it - he just happened to notice when his occasional mutterings while working on the doll started to address it. Never quite in a way that demanded a response, more like the idle chatter of a stereotypical hairdresser, little “How does that feel?” and “A bit more over here, don’t you think?” comments.

Whenever he paused working on the doll to work on a dress or a skirt instead, it was hard to think of the clothes as being entirely his own construction. The frame continued to inspire him, and a few of his creations actually sold, even if they never seemed quite as interesting to him on more traditional mannequins.

When he fitted the doll’s head in place on the frame, secured it tight, and it blinked twice before a soft, uncertain voice said, “Hello,” he didn’t react except to freeze for a second, mouth falling open before snapping shut.

It was only when the doll lifted both hands, flexing the joints before tapping Proto on the shoulder and saying, “Hello?” that he fainted.

 

Proto felt perfectly justified in running for a baseball bat when he woke up to plastic fingers shaking him by the shoulder, though when he turned to face the doll again while armed, it wasn’t exactly crawling towards him with murder in its eyes. It just sat still, hands folded in its lap, watching his every move.

If he didn’t know better, he’d say it looked nervous.

“I’m dreaming,” Proto said, measuring his surroundings as he took a few slow, deep breaths to try and calm himself down. “Or I’ve gone mad.”

The doll bowed its head, frowning in distress as it looked at its hands. “I thought this was real,” it said, voice raspy as if it wasn’t familiar with speaking - and why would it be, after all? - as it flexed its fingers. “I thought - you talked to me, you were different. No one talks to me anymore, except when they’re sleeping.”

Proto sat down on the opposite side of the room, still clutching the bat tight, skin prickling at the fact he couldn’t trust the sight in front of him. Not for the first time, he regretted having dabbled in hallucinogenics. “What are you?”

“I don’t know,” the doll said, hugging its long legs to its chest. “I think I was meant to be human. I don’t remember dying like the others.”

Proto blinked. He hadn’t known his subconscious had a spiritualist streak.

“My name is Piki. You never told me yours.”

Proto put down the bat slowly, kept his fingers loose around the handle as he set it on the floor. Something about that name itched, felt familiar, and he wasn’t in the best frame of mind for working out what by himself. “Proto. Who talks - talked, to you?”

“Pitch, before he grew up. Grown-ups can’t see me. Or pretend they can’t,” the doll looked up at him, bright black irises reflecting light as if they were alive, “But you can see me, can’t you?”

Proto nodded, traced the bat with his fingertips as the doll clambered to its feet, unsteady like a foal, and the reason that name sounded familiar came to mind as it did.

It had only come up once, maybe twice, a family tragedy swept under the rug. Pitch was meant to be a twin, but his twin had been stillborn.

Proto watched plastic legs struggle for balance, clicking and creaking as they got used to movement, and wondered if perhaps he wasn’t quite as mad as previously assumed. “Piki, how did you get in there?”

“I’m not sure. I wanted to, and then I was.” Piki looked down at his feet, flexing them, before giving Proto a shy smile. “I was lonely until I found you.”

Proto watched Piki stumble towards him, realised his legs had been fitted slightly uneven, and stood up to catch him before he could fall. “I can fix this,” Proto said, looking between his bed and the floor, knowing whatever he chose, he would still have to remove and reattach Piki’s leg, something that would have been a hell of a lot easier to consider if dealing with an inanimate doll.

Proto nodded to himself, steered Piki over to the bed and helped him lie down, a guilty thrill running up his spine at how readily Piki stretched out for him.

“Let me know if this hurts,” Proto said, mouth feeling dry as he grabbed Piki by the frame of his hips with one hand, the other sliding over the plastic of Piki’s thigh. There wasn’t any blood when he popped it out of its socket, Piki’s expression curious rather than pained as Proto adjusted the frame before socketing the thigh into its proper place.

Out of the socket, it had felt light and empty. Socketed, it shifted under his hold as if there were more holding it together than wires and plastic joints.

Proto sat back, watched Piki wriggle his hips to test the fit.

“Is that better?” Proto asked, trying to ignore the spike of arousal Piki’s actions had caused, trying to tell his libido _it’s just a doll_.

“It’s easier,” Piki said, lifting his legs up, splaying them, and closing them before sitting up, apparently satisfied with the new fit. “Thank you.”

Piki’s brief gymnastic display had knocked most of what remained of Proto’s sense out of him, along with all of his words, and when Piki extended his arms awkwardly for a hug, Proto returned it without much thought, wrapped his arms around cool metal that he couldn’t begin to pretend was human.

It went on too long to be normal, and Proto didn’t care that he was shaking, wanting the continued comfort of Piki’s arms around his waist for as long as he could have them.

“Is that better?” Piki asked, echoing Proto’s earlier question, and he nodded before pulling back reluctantly, muscles aching.

“I need to eat,” Proto said, wanting a moment to think away from the lure of open arms and black eyes framed by long eyelashes. “Make yourself at home, just stay away from the windows for now,” he allowed himself another quick touch, cupping Piki’s face and rubbing his thumb across a light pink cheek. He was glad he’d airbrushed on that touch of colour, something to make Piki’s face a little less ghostly. “I don’t want anyone to hurt you.”

Piki nodded, and Proto felt his gaze until the second he shut the door.

 

Proto wasn’t given to snacking, but making a sandwich was straightforward enough even with a preoccupied mind, and having something to fill his stomach helped settle it.

His cousin’s twin’s ghost was occupying the doll he’d designed to be a silent companion.

Describing the situation as simply as he could didn’t make it any easier to deal with. The thought of exorcism felt like murder, and he couldn’t exactly let Piki walk around freely - his own instinct had been to grab a baseball bat, and there were people far more inclined towards violence.

Moreover, as much as Pitch abandoning him had hurt, introducing Pitch to his dead brother was far from appropriate revenge. Piki seemed naïve and affectionate, and deserved better than to be used as a means to get back at Pitch.

And that tied into another problem. Proto couldn’t deny that he was attracted to Piki, despite knowing almost nothing about him; he’d made Piki to be beautiful, and having that beauty animated by Piki’s movements and gestures felt like a fantasy.

Even if Piki clearly knew something of humanity, he’d never interacted with it beyond speech before, and his lack of genitalia complicated matters further still. Proto only thought of him as male because he knew Pitch’s twin had been identical, and he didn’t know what gender or sex or love might mean to someone who’d never had a body before.

It was going to make for an awkward talk, one only made worse by the fact he and Piki would have to share a room regardless of its outcome.

Proto finished his sandwich, dusted the crumbs off his hands before running his fingers through his hair, rubbing his scalp in a vague attempt to calm himself further.

Nothing was about to change the fact he had a living doll in his room, and taking time out to think about it wasn’t actually helping to resolve the situation. It wasn’t a situation that _could_ be resolved. A doll that he had made had come to life for no better reason than a ghost wanting to possess it and succeeding in doing so.

Proto wondered if there were any alternate universes where his life could be considered normal.

 

Piki had curled up on his bed with a book when he returned, trying to turn a page and frowning when his fingers kept sliding across the paper uselessly.

Proto winced, felt guilty that the frictionless surface of Piki’s fingers wasn’t making the task any easier for him, and walked over, turned the page for him and earned a small smile for it.

He wondered whether scuffing Piki’s fingers with sandpaper would help, or if it would be better to give him gloves, sat down next to Piki and turned each page whenever Piki nodded to indicate he’d finished.

It was quiet and peaceful, despite the impossibility of it all, and Proto settled a hand at the base of Piki’s back, fingers curling loosely around the wire cage of his spine.

Maybe there was no need to complicate the situation just yet. “Do you need somewhere to sleep?” Proto asked as they neared the end of a chapter, Piki’s reading speed unusually fast, though not freakishly so.

“I’ve never tried sleeping,” Piki replied, looking thoughtful. “I could try. I don’t know if it will work.” He closed the book, setting it aside before facing Proto. “I know we’re not close, but can I sleep next to you? I’ve not had a body before and I think - it would be safer if I could sleep next to you.”

Proto knew a thousand reasons why the idea was a really, _really_ bad one. He’d watched enough horror movies, read enough ghost stories to get a healthy understanding of what risks weren’t worth taking.

“I’ll get you something to wear,” Proto said.

It didn’t matter that he was putting himself in danger. There wasn’t a hint of viciousness in Piki, and if that innocence was a trap, he was willing to be caught by it. He had been achingly lonely in a way platonic friendships couldn’t fulfil, and having someone willingly share his bed - someone who _asked_ to share his bed - felt like the universe answering a prayer he’d never voiced.

The nightgown was old fashioned and feminine, high collared and long-sleeved, pale yellow cotton covering Piki to a point where he almost looked human. It didn’t make him much more comfortable to lie next to, but it made looking at him a lot less jarring.

Piki took Proto’s hand and tugged on it to wrap around his waist, refused to close his eyes until he could see Proto spooned up against him, and went completely still once he did.

Piki didn’t have breath or nervous twitches to give him movement, and Proto couldn’t help but fear he’d wake to stillness, to find this had all been some sort of fevered dream.

He let himself rest his forehead against the back of Piki’s neck, held Piki a little tighter.

If Piki was a dream, Proto hoped he’d never wake up.

 

Cool plastic pressed against his lips, his cheek, and Proto’s eyes snapped open when it stroked his neck, Piki’s expression turning from curious to guilty.

“Sorry,” Piki said, and Proto registered dimly that it was still dark outside. “I tried to sleep. I don’t think that I can.”

“What were you doing?” Proto asked, and Piki pinched his earlobe lightly between two fingers, rubbing the skin back and forth.

“Testing,” Piki replied, curiosity switching places with guilt once more. “You’re much softer than me.”

Proto nodded, mouth feeling dry again thanks to Piki’s casual relationship with skin contact, and in a half-asleep burst of bravado asked, “Can I kiss you?”

Piki smiled and nodded, both hands cupping Proto’s face before he leant in to press their mouths together, keeping them pressed without any other movement or any attempts to nudge Proto’s lips apart.

Proto smiled back, pulled away just enough to nuzzle Piki’s nose with his own before initiating another kiss, pushing Piki’s lips open and tracing their outline with his tongue.

There was no hidden warmth in Piki, nothing wet, but the uncertainty behind each movement he made was more human than any pulse could be, and the fact Piki didn’t need to pause for breath was a blessing, something that let Proto indulge his curiosity entirely at his own pace. Proto hadn’t kissed anyone just for the sake of kissing them in years, and Piki was more beautiful, more frightening, more interesting than any of those others had ever been.

Piki pushed him back after a while, thumbs rubbing Proto’s cheeks in slow circles.

“Can I stay here?” Piki asked, and Proto nodded, the lack of urgency in Piki’s touch soothing and helping him stay on the cusp between sleep and arousal.

“As long as you like,” Proto replied, kissing Piki again before he could say anything like “forever”, anything that might tempt fate, and wrapped both arms around Piki, holding him close.

 

Proto woke to an empty bed and rumpled sheets, looked over at where the dressmaking frame had originally stood, half expecting the night’s events to have been those of an intense lucid dream.

The doll wasn’t there either, and Proto’s stomach fluttered as a soft chorus of clicking and creaking let him know to turn over, Piki standing in front of Proto’s dressing table and slipping on a purple velvet dress. It swamped his frame, having originally been bought for Proto’s own use, but combined with the coat Piki wrapped himself in before posing he looked like a twenties movie starlet.

Proto watched with a smile as Piki layered long necklaces around his shoulders, beads rattling against his chest each time he moved, lost in his own little world and seemingly unaware that Proto was awake.

Piki was undeniably his own person, and Proto knew next to nothing about him. He was otherworldly, literally so, and the thought of being responsible for satisfying his curiosity was both frightening and exhilarating.

Proto cleared his throat when Piki struggled with a necklace that had caught in his hair, climbed out of bed and walked over to help detangle the mess. “Sorry,” Piki said, and Proto shook his head, smiling.

“Dressing up suits you,” Proto said, cocking his head towards the wardrobe where he kept his contributions to Pitch’s theatre. “There’s more in there if you want to try them.”

Piki’s eyes widened before he rushed towards the wardrobe, and Proto leaned against the dressing table, watched Piki pick through the clothes excitedly, piling those he wanted to try around his feet. Proto could have corrected him on how to treat the clothes, but he didn’t want to disrupt the enthusiastic outburst; creases could be ironed out, dust brushed away.

Piki’s presence felt like a chance to enjoy his life again, and while Proto didn’t know how long he would get to spend with Piki, or how it would affect the turns where he lost all interest in the world, it was a chance he was willing to take.

Piki was a secret worth keeping.


	31. Oxygen (Piki/Proto, Dressmaker's Secret, Teen and Up Audiences)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Dressmaker's Secret  
>  **Pairing:** Piki/Proto  
>  **Rating:** Teen and Up Audiences  
>  **Summary:** What if doll!Piki became human? Based on Peachsweater's artwork, which was in turn inspired by the animated short From Darkness.

Not so very long ago, two twin boys were born into a rich and powerful family, though only one of them breathed.

The boy who did not breathe grew nonetheless, even if he had to grow without a body; every day Piki would watch his brother in the cot, copy Pitch’s actions, mimic Pitch’s sounds. As years passed he learned how to make sounds of his own, though he could not touch anything, and most people who heard his sounds pretended not to.

Piki followed Pitch from city to city and wished he could have a body like his brother did, thought about how he would decorate it with clothes and makeup, how he would wear his hair long and loose. He thought about talking to people who would listen, about laughing at jokes and embracing the friends he would make.

And one day, when he wished so hard he almost felt it, he opened eyes that he now owned to a face that looked back at him in shock, and when he said, “Hi,” his sound had an echo, his sound moved through air and not just space. He lifted arms that creaked and clicked, arms of plastic and metal, and marvelled at having a body that could move, even if it did not feel.

It was enough for him to be a doll.

 

The man who had made his body was young, tall, and thin, smart and unsure of himself, with a habit of changing his mind often.

“I’m glad you’re not human,” he would say after a long day of work, admiring how Piki never tired, never complained about being asked to model clothes or bring piles of fabric and boxes of needles over to the work table.

“I wish you were human,” he would say when the room temperature dropped and Piki’s temperature dropped with it, or when he wanted a friend he could share with the world.

He gave Piki dresses and robes and trousers and shirts, painted his face in every colour Piki ever asked for, brought him gloves and scarves and enough paste jewellery to have Piki rattling with every step he took.

Proto danced with him and slept by him and read to him night after night, and Piki would kiss him and hold him and wonder what he saw in his dreams.

Though books told Piki a heart was needed to love, they also told him blood was needed to live, so he knew they weren’t always true. Piki looked at the faint lines around Proto’s eyes and the stubble on his chin, the evidence of humanity, and knew that while he loved him now, he would love him just as much in the body of a doll.

 

A winter came that lasted and lasted, clinging damp and wet to the inside of their home, and long, late nights wore at Proto’s health. Piki watched as shadows grew under Proto’s eyes, as colour leeched from Proto’s cheeks, and did all he could to help - he prepared meals for when Proto came home and before he went to bed, bleached away patches of mould and used old rags to cut off draughts.

But Piki was no doctor and Proto was still human, and Piki startled at coughing that rattled his cage as much as it did Proto’s lungs, ordered Proto to bed and wrapped him in blankets before bringing him food.

The night seemed strange, too dark, clouds heavy with snow that had not yet fallen, and Piki feared what that strangeness might mean for a human, sat on the bed and watched over Proto as he slept, breaths sounding thick and wet, limbs tense with discomfort.

Piki wished he could help, looked out of the bedroom window at the strange clouds, blocking out the moon’s shape but not its soft glow, and he watched the snow start to fall as the long night wore on, white flakes clinging to the glass without melting.

 

Piki wasn’t sure what made him move his hand to rest over Proto’s heart, but he froze in place when he felt it beating, as surely as if the plastic of his hand had turned to flesh.

 _I wish I could help_ , Piki thought again as Proto coughed in his sleep before wheezing through the next few breaths, and the beating intensified until he couldn’t resist pressing his other hand over it, to see what else he could feel, if it was some strange illusion or if it was true.

Beating, beating, beating like a snare drum.

Piki leaned in close, tilting his head, pressing his ear to Proto’s chest and clenching his hands against it when he could hear the same beat he could feel.

The beat was joined by warmth, and Piki held on tight, weeping at the comfort of what he had never felt before but always wondered over, and warmth was joined by scent, the stinging intensity of ointment.

 _Let me help_ , Piki thought, and felt weight holding him to Proto, felt the shape of something new at his feet and his hands, spreading up his legs and his arms, curling around his hips and his waist and his chest. _Let me be warm for him_.

A beat started up within him, faster and harder than the one beneath his cheek, and the beat was soon joined by a burning, a need he didn’t understand until he sat up and gasped, heard his voice in that gasp, felt the wetness of a throat and the relief of breathing air.

Piki lifted the arms he had looked at when he first took a body, and found flesh in place of plastic, shifted his legs that had once been fitted wrong and found them tucked underneath hips, not wire, looked down and found a chest, a stomach, dark curls trailing down to a soft cock.

He pressed his hands to his face and found lips - plump and slightly damp - and a nose, eyelids, eyebrows, reached backwards into long, loose hair.

He shivered, and marvelled at shivering, before pulling back the duvet and sliding beneath it, curling himself around Proto and watching Proto’s eyes slide half-open.

Proto didn’t have to say a word, turned to wrap his arms around Piki’s back and closed his eyes once more, slipping into a deeper, easier sleep, his breathing still laboured but the tension in his body drained.

Piki felt Proto’s heart beat against his chest, felt his own heart beat against Proto’s, and in amongst the world of new sensations, he felt something strange and unknown and alluring; fatigue.

Piki had never slept before.

He closed his eyes, leaned forward to brush his lips against Proto’s before resting his head against the pillows.

There was so much softness and warmth in the world, far more than he had been able to see with eyes alone.

And as he breathed with lungs that had never known air before, closed eyelids that filtered light into a dark, living red, he wondered how he had ever thought being a doll could be enough.


	32. Patching Up the Walls (Pitchiner/Proto, Pitch/Pitchiner, Nightmare Dork University, Mature)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Pitchiner/Proto, Pitch/Pitchiner  
>  **Rating:** Mature  
>  **Warning:** References to bad BDSM practice, and a brief bit of daddy kink.  
>  **Summary:** Proto comes back from a bad experience with a dom, and Pitchiner helps out with aftercare.

Pitchiner had come to realise over the years of knowing him that Proto’s emotional vocabulary was much broader than he’d first assumed - Proto just happened to be picky about when he proved it.

If Pitchiner’s parents were visiting, Proto was a model citizen, charming and polite and reserving his acid tongue for celebrity gossip if it came up. If Purradox or Tarminator were in clingy, whiny moods, Proto was willing to be an affectionate and attentive master.

Proto could be full of surprises as well as scares, and not all of them were bad.

 

Pitchiner hadn’t ever expected to find Proto acting timid, but there was definitely a touch of apprehension in Proto’s attitude when he came home from one of his “club nights” and saw Pitchiner in the kitchen.

It was written all over Proto’s face that he wanted to talk, so after putting the kettle on to make his own coffee and whatever Proto fancied, Pitchiner adopted the approach that normally worked for Jack, opening his arms and saying, “Spit it out, kid.”

“I’m trying to,” Proto snapped, fetching the vegan hot chocolate and cursing when he dropped the jar on the counter, hands shaking.

Pitchiner straightened the jar and passed a teaspoon to Proto, cocked his head as he assessed Proto’s appearance. Shaking hands aside, he looked alright - still pale and skinny, but no skinnier or paler than usual, and the circles under his eyes weren’t too dark. “I’m guessing you don’t need a doctor, but I could do with a helping hand, man. What d'you need?”

Proto laughed, finished mixing up his hot chocolate before grabbing rice milk from the fridge and completing his blasphemy against all things good and chocolatey by adding a splash. “I spent the last half hour in the club waiting for someone to untie me after my dom left. She’d had an emergency and forgot to mention I was still in the private play room, so a few of the usual TLC clichés would be nice.” Proto smirked, made Pitchiner’s coffee for him, and handed it over.

Blasphemer against hot chocolate or not, he made good coffee, though anything was better than Pitch’s three teaspoons of the strongest cheap brand assault on his tongue. “Hot chocolate, warm bath, lots of cuddles?” Pitchiner guessed, unsure of what Proto considered cliché.

“Mmhm. Just pretend you love me and I have a cold you can’t catch.”

Pitchiner was willing to put up with a lot of bullshit from Proto, but he figured the reason that stung was because Proto said it like he meant it. Finishing his coffee by chugging it down in far too hot gulps that he’d likely pay for later and setting the cup aside, Pitchiner grabbed Proto by the waist and pulled him close, kissing him hard with tight lips. “I don’t fuck people I hate, y'know. I think you’re fucking scary, but I don’t hate you.”

Proto didn’t exactly smile at that revelation, but he did sigh and lean his head against Pitchiner’s shoulder, occasionally lifting it to take a sip of his hot chocolate, but otherwise happy enough to be held.

The coffee-scorched inside of Pitchiner’s throat didn’t feel so bad when he got to play the good guy, and it was some time after Proto finished his drink that Pitchiner suggested, “How about that bath, then?”

Proto’s fingers clenched against Pitchiner’s back. “You don’t have to spoil me.”

Pitchiner shrugged. “What if I want to? No one else ever lets me. If that’s okay, I mean.”

Proto swallowed thickly before nodding, and Pitchiner pulled away enough to take Proto’s hand and lead him through to the bathroom, wondering what Jack and Proto had in common that made the idea of being spoiled so nerve-wracking. Pitch just hated fuss - Jack and Proto seemed to like it, but were reluctant to accept it.

Pitchiner turned on the taps and tossed in a fistful of the salts left over from Pitch’s last fit of exhaustion, and figured shitty parenting had a lot to answer for.

 

The horny fucker inside Pitchiner had hoped Proto would want company in the bathroom, and he wasn’t exactly unhappy when its hopes were answered. Proto wanted privacy for using the toilet and brushing his teeth, but allowed Pitchiner back in before climbing into the tub.

Pitchiner wondered how the family line Proto and Pitch came from had ever survived when the guys were almost all stick-thin workaholics, Proto’s bones seeming all too close to the skin when he sponged it clean. Clean-ish, anyway - he’d opted against using soap.

Maybe the secret to their family survival was the spectacular asses. Piki and Pitch had beauties, and Proto’s wasn’t bad for his build.

“Did you have fun tonight, at least?” Pitchiner asked as he washed Proto’s back, bruises and scratches and scars covering it that looked crueller than any he’d ever given Pitch, even if the hisses Proto let out when the sponge rubbed over them seemed entirely self-satisfied.

“Yes, daddy,” Proto murmured, eyes closed and face relaxed as if he was half-asleep, and Pitchiner wondered if he’d even realised what he’d said. “They’re good friends, you would like them.”

So he had realised. Pitchiner smiled, feeling a little less guilty about how his cock had stirred at the nickname. “Good. I want the best for my boy.”

Proto’s eyes fluttered open lazily before he held out his hands, Pitchiner standing up with him to help him out of the tub, and wrapping a towel around his shoulders, patting it down gently instead of roughing it over his skin like he’d normally do for himself. Proto smiled and pulled away, before saying, “I think I’ll be alright now. Thank you.”

Pitchiner nodded, pulled the plug out of the bath before chewing his lip in thought; he didn’t think anything of fucking other people, but Pitch was pretty much monogamous with him, and he’d tried to be that way with others emotionally. Sex was sex, intimacy could be complicated. “I can tuck you in,” Pitchiner said, figuring that was the fairest compromise, and feeling pretty pleased with his decision when the tension dropped out of Proto’s shoulders.

 

Pitch was dead to the world when Pitchiner slipped into bed beside him, muttering something incomprehensible as Pitchiner rearranged the blankets but otherwise unconscious, and Pitchiner kissed him lightly, once on the neck, once on the shoulder. It was tempting to wake him, to kiss him until he stirred then hold him down and fuck him slowly, until they both came hard and fell asleep sticky and sated.

He decided against it, considering all the time and effort he’d put into fixing Pitch’s sleeping pattern over the last few months.

Pitchiner didn’t often go to bed feeling like he’d won a game unless he’d literally played one, but as he wrapped an arm around Pitch’s waist and shut his eyes, he couldn’t help but feel victorious.


	33. Outlast Was a Bad Idea (Pitch/Pitchiner, NDU Gamers, Mature)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** NDU Gamers (an AU where Pitch, Pitchiner, and Proto from Nightmare Dork University are also Lets Players)  
>  **Pairing:** Pitch/Pitchiner  
>  **Rating:** Mature  
>  **Summary:** Pranking each other on camera was never going to end well.

Pitch thought himself pretty lucky for ending up with flatmates who all happened to be fellow gamers. He had fallen for Pitchiner’s muscles and deliciously large cock long before discovering they shared a passion for Call of Duty, and since that discovery they had spent many nights killing Nazi zombies together before fucking. Or sometimes fucking while killing zombies, though that tended to throw off his aim.

Proto was more of a casual gamer, generally sticking to whatever he could download for free, although he sometimes used Steam to acquire indie or retro classics. How they ran on Proto’s Frankensteinian machine Pitch had no idea, but he wasn’t about to risk opening it up to find out - he wouldn’t be surprised to find rats on wheels powering the damned thing.

A perk of having gamer flatmates was hearing recommendations and reviews he could actually respect. Pitchiner advised Dead Space was like a rollercoaster where you weren’t strapped in and your fellow passengers were armed cannibals; Proto advised OFF was the heart-warming story of a sportsman and his pet vanquishing ghosts so he could be reunited with his son.

Pitch had stood up during the end battle of OFF, found Proto, and punched him in the face before returning to recording his reactions to the game.

 

Piki had teased Pitch about his ‘Lets Play’ videos when he first started uploading them, never letting Pitch forget about the time he’d run a gaming blog titled “So Goth I Was Born Black” before getting hounded off the account for accidental racism. He was fourteen years old at the time, but Piki still thought it hilarious.

Pitch made a point of screencapping each subscriber milestone for Black Bites Back and sending it to Piki. When he started selling mugs with quotes on them and made enough money in the first month to take himself and Pitchiner out for a restaurant meal, he made a point of taking selfies with Pitchiner at dinner and emailing them over before they’d even paid the bill. It was good to get even, and for all that Piki’s plays sold better than Pitch’s, Pitch liked knowing that he was the only twin responsible for a meme.

Much of his success was down to female gamers, or at least female fans, who seemed to have an obsession with his voice despite the fact he’d made it pretty clear he wasn’t single or heterosexual. If his references in YouTube uploads hadn’t made enough of a point, then the livestream that Pitchiner interrupted by coming home drunk from a game and tackling Pitch from his chair should have done the trick.

Pitch managed to turn off the webcam just in time but his headset was only dislodged, not unplugged, and a muffled recording of their mutual handjob session had made its rounds within a certain circle of his followers as a result.

 

It wasn’t the first or last time Pitchiner caused him embarrassment, and he liked to repay the favour by putting on the campiest voice he could and fussing over Pitchiner when he dared to play multiplayer Call of Duty without offering an invitation.

Matters eventually escalated, Pitchiner crawling under Pitch’s desk to give him a furtive blowjob mid-livestream, Pitch playing the opposing team in multiplayer matches and camping over Pitchiner’s corpse or finding a good spot to repeatedly snipe him from, until they promised to call it quits. Further escalation might have involved naked dicks on camera and Pitch knew his audience wasn’t always telling the truth about their age when joining livestreams.

He didn’t judge them - he’d played Doom 3 long before he was “old enough”, and Heretic, Doom, and Quake had all been important parts of his formative years. Nonetheless, the potential presence of minors did mean he felt a certain degree of responsibility for his followers, which meant kicking perverts, racists, and homophobes off his channel. It also meant keeping both his and his boyfriend’s cocks in their respective pants, or at least out of view of the camera.

To his credit, Pitchiner did keep his promise about no more dicks in vicinity of the webcam.

 

Pitch wanted to like Outlast, he really did. It had come so highly recommended by so many of his gaming friends, and they’d been right when recommending Amnesia, but it just kept falling flat for him. There just wasn’t enough tension and suspense between the scares for his liking, and the inability to really fight back against the enemies meant there wasn’t enough of a thrill to make up for it.

He’d already apologised to those watching for the dull experience, loaded up Outlast: Whistleblower in hope it would prove more entertaining, and felt relieved when it did. The game felt surer of itself, as if the designers had found their niche and were happy to explore it. Eddie was perfectly repulsive and yet appealing to watch in all his repulsiveness, and Pitch watched the sequence where his character was strapped to a table and threatened with genital mutilation with rapt attention.

Too rapt.

His scream when a blunt edge pressed against his neck almost burst his own eardrums, and he leapt out of his seat - or tried to anyway, succeeding only in smacking his attacker with his keyboard before tripping over his own feet and sprawling onto the floor.

“Shit, that hurt! … Babe, you okay?” Pitchiner asked, some genuine concern in there alongside the laughter. Pitch cursed and kicked at him before sobbing, then covered his mouth and curled up in a ball, dying of shame. “Shit shit shit, I’m sorry babe,” Pitchiner said, crouching down next to him and pulling Pitch into an awkward hug, more sincerity in his voice this time despite his continued laughter. “I’m so sorry, I’m a mean fucker, are you okay?”

“Do I fucking look okay?” Pitch shrieked back, looking up at Pitchiner before snorting and starting to laugh, despite the fact he was still shaking. “Oh, you asshole. It’s a good thing that game autosaves.”

As if on cue, a horrified garbled scream escaped the computer speakers, and Pitch flopped against Pitchiner’s chest with relief. “Want to get back to your game?” Pitchiner asked, rubbing Pitch’s shoulder gently.

“I want to go Eddie Gluskin on you,” Pitch said, snuggling in. “Luckily for you I like your cock too much.”

“I love you too pooh bear,” Pitchiner said.

He had to wait a while to gather the energy for it, but it was worth the satisfaction when Pitch managed to punch Pitchiner in the arm hard enough to get a genuine “ow” out of him.

He hadn’t liked either version of Outlast that much anyway, and it was getting closer to The Evil Within’s release date. He could pick up his Lets Play videos again then.

 

“I want to go Eddie on you” became his best-selling mug within a fortnight.


	34. A Softer Rapture (Jack/Proto, In the Flesh/Nightmare Dork University, Mature)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** In the Flesh/Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Jack/Proto  
>  **Rating:** Mature  
>  **Warnings:** Mentions of death and suicide.  
>  **Summary:** Proto didn’t believe in angels until he died and met Jack.

Proto hadn’t thought much of religion in his first life. He’d been raised Catholic, went through the motions of attending church, saying his lines in communion, confession, confirmation, a series of Cs that did nothing to persuade him of miracles or the sanctity of life.

He lived, he died, and it was only then a miracle happened. Two, in fact.

He rose from the dead, and he met Jack.

 

Jack’s parents didn’t see how important he was or how beautiful - they tolerated his presence, but everything about their behaviour said they wished it was his sister that had risen. After all, she hadn’t wanted to die; she’d frozen, or drowned, Proto didn’t know which but he knew thin ice had killed her. And unlike Jack’s cousin who’d written a suicide note before downing pills with the much, much older man he was dating in secret, Jack hadn’t left a letter.

Jack’s family had been riddled with tragedy even before Jack slit his wrists, but he had come back, a blessing, a redemption, and what remained of his family could not see it. They had him hide behind drawn curtains and thick layers of cover-up, enough that he walked around practically orange when he dared to leave the house, and they had him wear those ridiculous solid blue contact lenses.

Proto never thought the day would come when he would see what lay beneath the cover-up, but he’d mistaken Jack’s quiet nature for a coward’s before, and Jack had proved him wrong.

Jack was proving him wrong again.

 

Proto didn’t think Jack’s parents knew he was visiting, doubted they would have cared much if they did, and sat on the edge of Jack’s bed, waiting for him to emerge from the shower. He wondered what scars Jack had beyond those on his wrists and the injection point on the back of his neck, wondered if Jack had any needle scars for reasons other than vaccination.

Proto scratched lightly at his elbow, feeling self-conscious of the track marks that littered his skin, but the feeling passed when Jack opened the en-suite door and stood before him, naked and dripping wet.

Proto didn’t mean to cry, but choked back a sob at the sight of him anyway. Jack was more beautiful than he had dared imagine, his eyes glacial, skin and lips and hair as white as snow. As ivory. As nothing, because they weren’t perfect and Jack was.

“I’ve shown you mine, now y-you show me yours,” Jack said, stammering, and Proto took the hint.

Even if stripping out of his sweater and jeans was meant to address the imbalance between them, Proto couldn’t help but feel like Jack wore his nudity like a kind of armour, and his was just - exposure.

Jack walked over, dropped to his knees, and for a brief, confused moment Proto thought Jack was going to try and give him a blowjob despite the fact neither of them had the blood-flow to make it any fun. He laughed when Jack simply helped him take off his socks, looked at the unused blood vessels running down Jack’s shoulders and chest in dark rivers. He wondered what it would have felt like to trace every single one of them with his tongue, back when it had full sensation.

“A-always struggled with those even - even when I w-wasn’t. This.” Jack waved a hand over his face dismissively and Proto leant forward, hands stopping just shy of Jack’s shoulders.

“May I?” Proto asked, and when Jack nodded, he let his hands make contact, stroked up Jack’s shoulders to his neck, closing his fingers and thumbs around it. Proto’s skin was numb for the most part, as if he was forever wearing gloves, but he could still feel how fragile Jack was, how easy to break, even if he couldn’t feel each breath passing through Jack’s throat.

“You look amazing,” Jack said, and Proto let go, reached his fingers up to touch Jack’s lips - his real lips, with their real, white tinged with blue colour - scarce believing that those words had come out of them.

They were bitten and scarred, typical for anyone who had fought with their teeth, and Proto shivered at the thought of how Jack would have hunted while looking like that - both inhuman like the rest of their kind, and angelic. A ravenous, avenging angel.

Proto felt a soft push against his fingertips - kisses, small and gentle ones - before Jack opened his mouth slightly and ran his tongue over them, looking Proto directly in the eye for permission.

Proto pushed one of his fingers into Jack’s mouth, knew he would have let Jack bite it off entirely if he wanted to. Jack paid attention to each of Proto’s fingers in turn, sucking on and licking at them before moving onto Proto’s palm with soft little butterfly kisses that Proto could see and hear but couldn’t feel. It was enough to make his knees weak, and he was glad to be sitting.

Jack pulled back after an age that still wasn’t close to long enough, dipped his head further to kiss Proto’s stomach, his thighs, his soft cock.

“I’m sorry,” Proto said, remembering how this used to go with all the pretty people he used to spend time with back when his pulse could race.

“It might not al-always be this way,” Jack replied, not taking his hands off Proto’s legs, touching him as if Proto was the one worthy of worship. “I don’t mind. If it is, we’ll w-work something out.”

Jack smiled, and Proto had to smile back before he helped Jack up onto the bed, the two of them barely fitting together on it. Proto was too tall for it, and even if Jack hadn’t stopped growing before he died, he wasn’t unusually short for someone physically eighteen.

“Stay with me?” Jack asked, as if Proto had thought of any other option, and Proto held him tight, realised that they hadn’t kissed yet - not here, in Jack’s bedroom.

Proto held his breath and leant in, slowly, giving Jack a chance to stop him, and when Jack didn’t and their bare lips met, something like a heart beat inside Proto’s chest.

 _I love you_ , Proto kissed into Jack’s lips, sometimes soft, sometimes hard, and when Jack’s fingers pulled at Proto’s hair to tug him closer, it felt like he was kissing the words back.

Jack was worth breaking the rules for. Even the ones Proto had made for him.

He was worth dying for. Again.


	35. In Which Pitch and Pitchiner Are Terrible at Drunk Sex (Pitch/Pitchiner, Nightmare Dork University, Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Pitch/Pitchiner  
>  **Rating:** Explicit  
>  **Summary:** The title is accurate. Pitch and Pitchiner really are terrible at drunk sex.

Attempting to have sex when they were both drunk was always a messy affair, and given how he and Pitchiner had downed a bottle of wine each during the launch party for Piki’s play, it was safe to say they were both somewhere between “drunk” and “completely wasted”. They could still talk though, even if Pitchiner’s drawl was now so thick as to be almost indecipherable, and Pitch had slipped into his drinking habit of over-enunciating every syllable for clarity.

The ability to talk wasn’t necessarily a good thing though, because Pitch wasn’t interested in conversation, he was interested in Pitchiner’s hands and cock and the things he could do with his mouth that didn’t involve speech. Pitchiner, on the other hand, was in an affectionate mood and in between wrestling out of his clothes, he kept taking time to kiss Pitch and call him gorgeous, hot, sexy, a whole range of simple cliches that would normally be seasoned with insults when they were sober.

Pitch wasn’t entirely sure that he liked it, mostly because he didn’t know what Pitchiner wanted as a reply, but Pitchiner didn’t seem to be upset or angry at Pitch’s lack of response. Once they had both finished stripping down Pitch stretched out on the bed, waiting for Pitchiner to fetch lube or start jerking him off, or _something_ , but Pitchiner seemed to have other plans in mind.

If he had any plans at all. More than anything, he seemed to be preoccupied with staring at Pitch, looking him up and down.

“Well?” Pitch asked, sharply, and Pitchiner didn’t quite snap out of it, taking his time walking over to the bedside table and digging out a lube sachet - no point using the bottle while they were still working through the freebies from Pride - and still looking over Pitch as if he were admiring a painting. “Stop staring.”

Pitchiner shrugged, climbing onto the bed and manhandling Pitch onto his stomach. “‘S’not my fault you’re hot,” Pitchiner said, before Pitch felt the cold slick of lube against his ass and upper thigh, Pitchiner getting lube practically everywhere except inside him at first. “Really, really hot.”

Pitch rolled his eyes and propped himself up on knees and elbows, a little reluctant to do so when the bed itself was so inviting and soft, but still aroused enough to want Pitchiner’s fingers in deeper than lying down allowed.

Pitchiner grumbled something behind him, and Pitch looked over his shoulder, found Pitchiner was still limp and glaring at his cock as if he could intimidate it into showing interest. It wasn’t the first time Pitchiner had struggled while drunk, and Pitch was a little too drunk himself to feel sympathetic. “Oh for - let me do this,” Pitch growled, rolling over enough to let himself reach under the bed, groping blindly with his hands until he found the box he was interested in, and pulling it up, tossing it to Pitchiner. “Fuck me with that, at least.”

Pitchiner paused for a moment, giving his cock one last glare before shrugging in defeat and taking the dildo out of its box, weighing it in his hand.

Pitch wasn’t sure why that particular image was funny, but as Pitchiner crawled up the bed to lie down next to him and gestured for Pitch to sit on his lap, he started to laugh, and when Pitchiner started clumsily trying to shove the dildo into place, his laughter only increased.

“What’s so funny?” Pitchiner asked, which didn’t help matters, and Pitch graciously helped Pitchiner position the dildo in a way he actually liked before pushing himself back against it, seating himself so he could ride it as long as Pitchiner kept a firm grip.

“This is terrible,” Pitch said, and when Pitchiner looked offended, he bent over to give him a quick bite on the chin. “Don’t look like that,” he said, somewhere between affectionate and cautioning, and Pitchiner frowned at him, honest to god _pouting_.

“‘S’not fair though, you bein’ all gorgeous and me being shit in bed,” Pitchiner said, huffy, and Pitch raised an eyebrow. Possibly both eyebrows given that he wasn’t entirely in control of his muscles, but he was trying for one.

“You can be -” Pitch hesitated, thinking, and annoyed that thinking wasn’t helping him to sustain his own erection. He wanted to fuck and be fucked, but his cock seemed to be thinking of falling asleep along with the rest of Pitch’s limbs. “You’re good when you’re sober. Okay?” Pitch conceded, not wanting to go overboard with the compliments in case Pitchiner started getting smug. He still looked a little sore though, and Pitch patted him gently on the cheek. “I wouldn’t have terrible sex with anyone else.”

“Thanks, babe,” Pitchiner said, and Pitch couldn’t entirely determine if he was being sincere or sarcastic, looked down between his legs to see that his cock had apparently given up the battle entirely, even if he was still generally aroused.

Pitch didn’t always give up on a lost cause, but he was too tired to be invested in it this time, eased himself back off the dildo and took it from Pitchiner’s hands, tossing it off the bed with a loud thump before sprawling over Pitchiner’s chest.

”You owe me in the morning,” Pitch muttered against Pitchiner’s neck, and Pitchiner stroked a hand through Pitch’s hair that Pitch realised a little too late was still sticky with lube.

”Sure thing,” Pitchiner said, wrapping both arms heavily around Pitch’s back and holding him close, Pitch feeling the rise and fall of his deepening breaths. At least Pitchiner hadn’t fallen asleep on him while they were trying to fuck. It was a small mercy.

The weight tugging on Pitch’s eyelids suggested he hadn’t been far off the same fate either.


	36. A Little Collection of Piki's Poetry (Jack/Piki, Nightmare Dork University, Teen and Up Audiences)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **AU:** Nightmare Dork University  
>  **Pairing:** Jack/Pitch, implied Jack/Pitchiner  
>  **Rating:** Teen and Up Audiences  
>  **Summary:** A look at Piki's poetry over the years.

1.

Your eyes are like glass  
But you treat them like eggshells  
Like if someone looks too hard you’ll break into splinters  
And I wonder if someone shattered you before  
And I think about their necks  
And how they would feel under my hands  
Because you deserve to be safe  
You deserve to be happy  
And I will take you under my wing  
And I will give you the world if you want it  
I will wrap you in silk so you never break again  
And all I ask  
Is that you let me look at you  
Because all art deserves admiration  
No matter how fragile it seems

 

2.

White hair  
Pale lips  
Soft skin  
I’ll worship  
Every inch  
Every breath  
Of you

 

3.

Yes

Yes to whatever you want of me

Yes to whatever you need

I knew love at first sight didn’t exist  
I knew happy endings were for fairytales  
I knew cynicism for wisdom and pessimism for protection

I want to know what you’ll prove me wrong about tomorrow

Because you said yes

 

4.

I drank milk from a bottle today because it felt like drinking you  
Like swallowing you down  
Filling my throat with you  
My stomach  
Sliding you over my tongue  
Pressing you against my teeth  
Keeping you inside me the one way I know how

 

5.

You collect bruises like a child collects toys  
Pretending I can’t see them  
That I can’t see the smiles on brutish faces  
Or how you blush when you smile back

You look away when I kiss them  
As if they’ll disappear if you do  
As if I would forget what they mean

I want to bite into your skin  
And swallow it whole  
And make you mine

You are not theirs

You are not for sharing

 

6.

I’m (not) glad you ran away  
I can’t stand (a life without) you  
How could you do this to me?  
(I love you I forgive you just tell me how to fix you)

 

7.

You took my oxygen with you when you left  
That was the only line I needed  
They said it was derivative  
What could be unique about pain  
What could be personal about dying  
Everyone knows heartbreak

And I want to tear out your lungs because they never said goodbye  
And cut out your eyes for never looking back  
And break your legs for walking  
But what I want is a lie

Because your room is still your room  
Your bookmarks gathering dust  
And I’m living with your ghost  
Fingertip smudges on DVDs  
Hairs woven into the carpet  
And every day I breathe  
And every day I watch the door  
And wonder why you stayed you  
When I became us  
And broke in two

 

8.

I can’t write  
Because you were a lie  
And I was part of it

 

9.

I didn’t know you until you left  
I missed the ghosts in your shadow  
I missed the lies on your lips  
I wanted the character you played more than you  
I didn’t want to change

Because I would still end the world for you  
I would fill the air with mustard gas and dump bleach into the oceans  
I would cut every throat neck by neck if I had to  
As long as it kept you breathing

And your arm around my waist feels like a knife  
Your kisses feel like lead in my stomach  
And I want to want to stop loving you

You promise everything will be okay  
And I’m terrified of your mouth

 

10.

Your eyes are like glass  
But I never saw through them  
Because you hid them like your secrets would spill out

We have so few secrets now  
Scars uncovered and old bruises laid bare  
And you can look at me without flinching  
And I can see what you really are

And I still love the curve of your lips and the white of your skin  
I still love the stutter when you forget how to breathe  
I still love the way you fit in my hands

But I love more how you fit back  
How you rise to my touch and guide me with your mouth  
How you meet my eyes when you ride me  
And you’re not afraid of the sounds you make

I loved who you pretended to be until I thought there could be no one else

I didn’t know the one person I could love more would still be you


End file.
